


touch.

by novelteas



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: (im just going to ignore. hm. aspects. that dont fit w my brilliant story), (obviously i know who he is), Case Fic, F/M, M/M, Original Character(s), Sexual Coercion, also just pretend half of s6 doesnt exist, also please be warned, anyway can you tell that I LOVE PETER JAKES, but that comes later and is not. like. graphic, he deserves some more character introspection!!!!, i just need jakes back....pls russell lewis please, jakes RETURNS to oxford, like who tf is ronnie box i dont know and i dont care, lots of opera, oh also bright is retiring too?, ok FINE this is just my love letter to peter jakes!!, ok it's IMPLIED jakes/morse but that is VALID, quite a few references to blenheim vale, semi-canon divergence if you will, some america!jakes content, sorry i'm tagging this like i tag on tumblr which is like. bad, there's no actual violence but there's obviously death, this is a real plot twist y'all, this is a sTUDY in PETER JAKES and HIS relationships ok, ya shook
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2020-09-24 21:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20365408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novelteas/pseuds/novelteas
Summary: Mr. Bright's intentions to retire at the end of the year come as a surprise to everyone. Fearing that one day he will come to work unable to recognize any of his colleagues, Morse decides, for the first time in years, to reach out to a friend, releasing a shock that sets in motion a chain of events that dredge up histories everyone involved would rather stay hidden. Of course, never one to be intimidated, Morse continues on with his investigation.





	1. zero.

**Author's Note:**

> yeet anyway i started rewatching endeavour and i was so shook like how did i used to not enjoy this?? and then i was like hhh peter jakes my sweet sweet baby whom i love and basically over the next like week started crafting this elaborate fic plot in my head despite repeatedly being like "no b stop it" so....here it is. obviously it's a work in progress and will probably stay like that forever, but i have every intention of completing it, even if it's a bit (very) rough around the edges (more than the edges honestly). rating will change if necessary. some good implied morse/jakes material in here too because like ... :). 
> 
> also i study music at university so i hope everyone realizes the "blasting opera/symphonic works/choral requiems at high volume in the room while i work furiously" aesthetic is very prevalent here.

It was freezing out. Jakes still hadn't adjusted to the frigid winters, the slicing pain against his face when the wind picked up. Cheyenne had felt like burning in hell, and was miserable at worst during the winter, but Chicago had been throwing him for a loop every day for the last year. He was glad he'd already gotten the hang of driving on the opposite side of the road before moving out here — he couldn't imagine trying to walk through the wind and rain to conduct inquiries — but with the snow piling up and the cold turning the road into an ice rink he wasn't willing to risk it. 

A sudden change in direction from the wind sent him and a dozen other pedestrians veering into the snowbank piling up next to the building. Jakes could hear Montgomery stumbling and swearing just behind him. 

"Bet you wish you hadn't come out here at times like this," Montgomery said, quickening his pace to catch up. 

Jakes adjusted his coat collar and pulled his scarf up further. His ears were about to freeze and break off. Icicles. "Job's out here, isn't it?" he said.

They turned the corner, and to his relief, the bar loomed just ahead. Two blocks always felt like two miles in this weather. Montgomery shuffled ahead, catching the door before it swung shut all the way. "What do the police here have that you didn't have over in London?"

"Oxford," Jakes corrected instinctively, then shook his head. He was becoming like Morse, he thought, ever the anal retentive, nitpicking everything his colleagues said. But, still. _London,_ really. There was a _difference_. "It's not as though we've got better weather over there, half the year," he added, stamping his feet on the mat just inside the bar, shaking off the snow. The moan of the wind gave way, yielding to light chatter and lounge music, the sound of glasses on tables and drinks being poured. "Can't count how many crime scenes I've turned up to and gotten drenched by the rain."

"Could have gone to California." Montgomery laughed and held up two fingers at the bartender. "Ha! Imagine you, Prince Philip, running around Los Angeles."

Jakes smiled wryly. Montgomery brought up a valid point. He'd only moved to Chicago because Hope's father, the sympathetic old man that he was, offered to reach out to an old friend in the police. The Chicago crowd was nothing like his Cowley crowd, not much fun to grab a drink with, not least of all because they were still calling him Prince Philip. He lit a cigarette and wondered if any of them had ever seen a picture of Prince Philip. "Beer's not as good here as it is back home," he said simply. 

Montgomery waved his hand. "Eh, you Brits are too picky."

They sat quietly for a good few minutes, Jakes mulling over what Montgomery'd said. He was right, of course. The weather was awful — at the very least, he could try to find someplace in New York, or California, like he'd suggested, now that he had a few more years under his belt. The temptation to do so though — hand in his papers, get another fresh start — was familiar. He'd thought about it before, at least once a month for the last year — perhaps even longer, in the wake of everything that had happened — and done nothing. Always the product of a bad day, he told himself. There was nothing to say he wouldn't be just as annoyed and miserable anywhere else besides here. And it was better to have a job here than not at all.

"Hey, look over there." Montgomery nudged him, pulling him out of his reverie and jerking his head in the direction of the sitting area. "Caught one for you."

Jakes frowned and took a lengthy drag on his cigarette. He looked. "What?"

"That girl, over there. Lady on the piano." Montgomery chuckled and took a sip of his beer. "She's easy on the eyes."

_Jesus._ Jakes made a silent apology to every girl he'd ever leered at, made an extra mental note to apologize to Joan Thursday if he ever saw her again. He squinted past a tall gentleman blocking his line of vision, shifted slightly to catch a glimpse of whoever Montgomery was pointing at, seated at the piano.

Jakes hadn't made much of a recent effort to see any women, too engrossed in his own life to pay attention, if he was honest with himself. Of course, there had been drinks, and a number of nights at his apartment in the last year. They were beautiful, to be sure, willing bodies and fresh-smelling hair and doe eyes, but the guilt gnawed at him all the time. He wasn't in love with them, and he certainly wasn't going to spend the time waiting for himself to fall head over heels for them. And certainly, no one was going to replace Hope for a while. He hated to admit it, but he was certain spending so much time around bookish Morse had elevated his standards and desire for intelligent conversation — something Hope could actually offer, even if her enthusiasm for her unfinished doctorate thesis on the racial implications of _The Tempest_ in the age of modern decolonization left him more or less in a fog.

But he did have to admit, Montgomery hadn't wasted his time pointing her out. Her face, expressing poorly concealed comical boredom as she toyed with a few notes at the piano, boasted delicately marked features. Dark eyes. Thick, dark hair, just like Hope's.

"What did I tell you?" Montgomery said, grinning. 

Jakes nodded. _Fuck this._ He stubbed out his cigarette. It was about time he did something for himself. He deserved it, a night to forget about the stupid guilt weighing on him and how much he hated the damn weather. He stood, drink in hand, wandered to the lounge, sidled into the curve of the piano, waited for her to stop playing.

She finished, finally, after three or four minutes — three or four minutes he suspected were extra, meant to deter him — and looked up from the keys, folding her arms across the top of the fallboard. "Can I help you?"

He could barely keep the shock of hearing her accent, soft around the vowels, from registering on his face. He gestured vaguely towards the bar. "When are they paying you until?"

She stared at him, impassive, and his heart skipped a beat. Maybe he'd lost it, he thought, lost his touch, and she was going to tell him to clear off, but then a smile twitched at the corners of her lips. "Stick around for another hour," she said, reaching behind her for a glass of water. 

"Okay," he breathed, barely audible. He backed away, reaching behind him until he felt the barstool behind him, and sat down. Lit another cigarette, counted the notes that she played and skimmed over. Guilt flickered at the back of his mind and he did his best to extinguish it. Hope, Angela, all of that — that ship had sailed. There was nothing to be done, certainly not by forcing himself into abstinence. 

Montgomery stopped by him at five 'til eleven, chuckling, clearly pleased with himself. "Best of luck, man," he said, finishing his drink and giving Jakes a good slap on the back. "I'll see you after the weekend. Give her a good time."

Jakes rolled his eyes. Montgomery had nerve, talking about women the way he did. He couldn't imagine what his wife must feel like — it was a wonder she hadn't already tried to file for divorce, the way Montgomery always commented on girls, complimented the curve of their bodies, winked at his mates when they saw another one as if accepting a challenge. Jakes shuddered to think he must have ever been such a way. But he had every intention of seeing this girl again, if he could help it, for a dinner or a coffee, another drink, maybe. And he'd avoid the mistakes he'd made with Hope.

The girl finished quietly at eleven, nodding at the manager behind the bar once as she closed the fallboard, stood up, smoothed her dress, gathered her jewelry from the side of the music rack, picked the glass up. For a terrifyingly disappointing moment, she looked as if she was going to walk straight past Jakes without even looking at him, but she stopped at the seat next to his and set her glass on the bar counter. 

"You're still here," she remarked, putting her watch back on and adjusting the ring on her index finger. 

He watched as she avoided his gaze, waited for her to look up at him. "Can I buy you a drink now?" he said, when she finally did, curiosity plain in her eyes.

She smiled and nodded, flushing. "Jacqueline," she said, holding her hand out. "And I'll have a gin and tonic."

He took it. "Peter."

Jacqueline — _God,_ what a name, Jakes thought to himself, thinking about the time he'd taken a girl home without even knowing her name, so eager to let go of the work and responsibility and guilt and sadness with case files and names and the people — sat, one elbow on the bar, head resting on her hand. "You've an accent," she said, pulling her drink towards her and narrowing her eyes at him. 

"So've you," Jakes shot back, handing his glass to the bartender for a refill. 

Jacqueline smiled again, intoxicatingly knowing and innocent at the same time, like she was waiting to see how far this would go, just out of interest. "You first."

"Oxfordshire," said Jakes, "and I suspect you as well."

"Bravo." Jacqueline took a sip of her drink and glanced back at him. "What're you doing here?"

Jakes hesitated. It was always a gamble, even in Oxford. Some girls loved it, when you said you worked for the police, smiled coyly and asked you to prove you had the physical skills; there were other girls whose faces dimmed noticeably, annoyed or unsure or wary, whatever it was, unimpressed with the answer. But now it was more complicated. Should he say he worked for the police? When she asked why the police here, what was he supposed to say? How much to explain about how he ended up on this side of the pond? The part where he had been forced to relive the most wretched details of his life, in front of the new Chief Constable and Assistant Chief Constable, in front of Thursday, Bright, the rest of his superiors and Morse, who all began to look at him with sadness and sympathy he didn't have patience for — just before Division sealed the files for the next half century? The part where he came here with the girl he was in love with, to start their life together afresh, on the right foot, give his child the world and love and everything for which he himself had wished? The part where he was driven away from that naive, fuzzy ideal before it even started, before it even took focus? He usually lied, made something up, said something that implied such a conversation would never progress past that point, but he reminded himself that he wanted a repeat with Jacqueline. So he said, "I didn't think Oxford was working for me."

Jacqueline eyes softened. "That's me, too. Were you at school there?"

"No. You?"

"Trinity." She rolled the glass around on its bottom rim, forehead driven into the heel of her palm. "So what were you doing in Oxford, then?"

"I was with the police there." He lit another cigarette, held one out to her. She held up her hand, refusal. "Cowley." An inexplicable part of him wanted her to know everything about him, to know his ugliest secrets, just so he could pour it all out and be done with it. But he wouldn't — couldn't — do that to her. Perhaps he could keep it all hidden, forever, if she didn't know anything about him.

Jacqueline's face shifted, tensed between her brows, brain putting pieces together. "Peter, you said? Peter Jakes?"

Jakes nearly choked on his drag, fought to keep from coughing. "I'm sorry?"

"You don't remember, do you?" She ignored the obvious shock splayed upon his face. "I don't expect you would. Jacqueline Hallward."

The name sounded familiar to him, but he couldn't place it. It was from a case, surely, that much was clear. "It's fine, don't worry about it. Not much use thinking about ancient history like that," she said dismissively, when he still hadn't made up his mind about where she was from, a minute later. "It's just a funny coincidence, is all." She finished her drink and stood. "It's late; I should be going. Thanks for the drink."

He tossed back the rest of his drink quickly, ground his cigarette into the ashtray. "Let me walk you home," he offered, standing hurriedly and following her to the door. "See you home safe."

She handed him her coat, waited for him to open it for her, slipped into it, pulled her purse onto her shoulder. "No, thanks," she said, turning around to face him.

His face fell. "Sorry?"

"I'd rather not," she clarified, her gaze dropping to their feet. "I mean — I only mean I can get home myself by the train. I enjoyed meeting you. And the drink. And . . . the coincidence that entailed." She stuffed her hands in her coat pocket and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, then reached suddenly into her purse and dug out a pen. "But give me a call," she added quickly, reaching into his pocket. Jakes could only watch, bemused, as she rooted through the inside of his suit jacket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes, scrawling what could only be her phone number on it. "It takes me less than half an hour to get home. Call me then?"

He held the cigarette pack in his open palm, watching as Jacqueline replaced her pen. "What if I don't call? What if I lose this?"

She looked up sharply, beaming. "Then you won't know if I got home safely," she said. She watched as he pocketed the box again. "But just in case, I'll be here tomorrow night, too."

Jakes pulled on his own coat. "Goodnight, then," he said, still a bit incredulous.

Jacqueline stood against the door, smiling at him for a moment before she left. She waved over her shoulder.

Jakes nodded back. It was decided, then. He would be here tomorrow.

* * *

Morse's brain was reeling with the news. He could hardly think, let alone listen to whatever Thursday was saying. _Retirement?_ He had fooled himself into a comfortable state of denial, taken Mr. Bright as a given, who would never age past where he'd already reach, let alone retire from the force. Retiring — Morse couldn't imagine what the chief superintendent would be spending retirement doing. Enjoying his pension, certainly, but by doing what? The prospect of having to cozy up to a new commanding officer was sickening. He grimaced at the notion, then pushed it away. _Never mind,_ he thought, scratching his head and returning his focus to the paperwork in front of him. There was still until the end of the year, nearly ten months, to come to terms with it all.

But he couldn't ignore it. Mr. Bright's announcement was an uncomfortable reminder of the inevitable: everyone had to move on at some point or other. There would certainly come a day when Thursday would have to leave, whether voluntary or not, Morse realized, and a day when he and Trewlove and Strange wouldn't be working together, not in the same office, not anymore. It was disturbing, the idea that he might come into work one day without recognizing his colleagues as the same ones who guided him, dragged him through the grimly obstacled path to where he was now — not that he was much of anything even now. It had stung like hell, saying goodbye to Jakes, Morse reminded himself. There had been so much he'd wanted to say in his letter that didn't make it in. That loss had been a slap in the face, an ugly truth he tried hard to ignore for so long — and for a man like Jakes, the same Jakes who'd bullied him with such diligence at the beginning, never mind how he softened up. He couldn't imagine what it would be like when he eventually lost every colleague he'd unwittingly come to treat as his family, the one that would always drop everything for him.

_Jakes._ Morse mulled the idea over, clicking his pen in a distracted haze. He hoped he was well, at the very least, that he had well and truly settled and found the happy life he deserved. Perhaps it was best to leave him alone; he certainly didn't need Morse unloading any of his miserable baggage onto him, not now, not after this much time. But then he also deserved to know, at the very least, that Mr. Bright was retiring. There would be a farewell, a send-off, surely, in November, and he was sure Jakes would appreciate the offer — even if he didn't take it — to attend. After all, there was no denying it, was there, that Jakes was certainly favored by the man — and he was sure Mr. Bright was in Jakes's good favors, too.

Morse opened his desk drawers, shuffled through the piles of office mail and blank paperwork. He couldn't remember where he'd written it, but it was almost certainly somewhere here, safe from the possibility of being lost and destroyed the next time he moved flats. The bottom drawer, perhaps, full of old expended notebooks. "1967," he muttered to himself, flipping through a few. 

The address turned out to be there, in the notebook he'd exhausted working on that Richardson's case, written on the back cover, inside the endpaper. Jakes had given it to him, when they'd been standing in the Richardson's, watching as uniforms took down the stock. 

"Give me your notebook," Jakes had said suddenly, holding his hand out.

Morse hadn't registered. "Sorry?"

Jakes had sighed and rolled his eyes comically. "Give me your notebook." Wiggled his outstretched fingers. "Come on."

Hesitant, Morse had reached into his pocket and produced the notebook. "It's almost out."

"I'm not looking to tear out pages," Jakes had snapped. He had flipped it open to the back, bracing the cover against his wrist and clicking his pen, scribbled a few lines down. "There." Handed it back. Morse had looked at it curiously. _Cheyenne, Wyoming._ "It's her address in America. If you ever . . . have news."

Morse hadn't been entirely sure what was meant by _if you ever have news._ News about what, exactly? He'd assumed that maybe Jakes wanted to stay abreast of workplace gossip, who was bent and who was a Blenheim Vale case in the making, but that seemed unlikely — at least, Morse thought, unlikely that Jakes wanted anyone writing to him to talk about something as despicable as Blenheim Vale or the like. He had written to the address once, after the incident at the bank, and Jakes had sent a response, but after that nothing seemed to merit a letter to Wyoming. As if Jakes would want to hear about Box or the merging. 

_It can't hurt,_ Morse thought finally, staring at the address on the cover. It was up to Jakes if he wanted to respond, if he even wanted to bother opening the letter when it arrived. 

"What's that?" Thursday said, nodding at the envelope in Morse's hand as they left to make a few inquiries. 

Morse shrugged, pocketed the letter. "Just something I need to post."

Thursday seemed dissatisfied with the answer, narrowed his eyes at the postage, but he didn't press on for a bit. Morse was grateful. Not that he was embarrassed to be caught writing to Jakes, but it seemed like everyone had moved on and forgotten the one-time sergeant. No use talking about him at Castle Gate now. 

The collection would be around soon. He slipped the letter into the postbox as they passed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't written fic in probably YEARS so please excuse my rusty dusty writing but this plot line has been plaguing me for the last week and i have plans for it to incorporate all my favorite things like implied jakes/morse and jakes finding a happy life and returning to oxford ;)))))) heh ((and angst)) but ya!! hope this hasn't been awful lmao....i know it ended super weird and i wanted to write more but i thought 3.3k was already pushing it for a prologue (imagine how long actual chapters would have to be i dont have that patience) so i stopped before going on lmao
> 
> also you can find me on tumblr [here](http://crosswordtypo.tumblr.com)!


	2. one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok this is so random but it drives me insane how you cant make a prologue on ao3 without it still being called chapter 1?? ao3 please....

**november, 1972**

The mailbox was empty, save the bottom half of a grocery receipt with _beat you to it!_ and a smiley face scribbled on it. Jakes had to fight to keep himself from breaking into a smile. It was embarrassing, he thought, just grinning when he was conducting inquiries and opened his notebook to find a little smiling heart doodled in the corner of a random page, being unable to stop himself when he reached for a cigarette and found a little _enjoy!_ awkwardly written on the side. He pocketed the receipt — today's, looking at the date — and locked the mailbox behind him. 

Jacqueline was in the kitchen when he got in, record player spinning away, _Turandot_ filling the apartment. Jakes pulled off his scarf, tossed the keys on the foyer table, glanced at the mail spread out there. "Did you get my note?" Jacqueline asked from the kitchen, beaming at him.

He held up the receipt. She giggled. "You've got something special today," she added, pointing. He looked down at the mail again, sifted through the envelopes. Most of them were addressed to a Mr. Steven Hallward — Jacqueline's father, whose name the apartment was leased under, according to Jacqueline — building management, business mail that looked like it was redirected, a promotion addressed to _Current Resident_.

"It's on the bottom, I think," Jacqueline said, sighing. She pushed him out of the way, filing through the mail herself until she found it, pulled it out, handed it to him between her fingers like it was a secret. "Here."

Jakes flipped the envelope over in his hands, trying not to react to the handwriting the addresses had been written in. _E. Morse,_ the return read, removing any fragment of doubt. He hesitated. Did he even want to open it? The last letter from Morse, when he'd picked up the mail on his way up that day seven or eight months ago, had left him frozen, standing dumbly in the middle of the stairwell. The recipient address had been taped over, re-written in Hope's father's handwriting — presumably the only reason it had even found its way in the first place, Jakes realized, with overwhelming gratitude for his father-in-law — but unfolding the paper inside was exhilarating, like a child discovering buried treasure, the thought that whatever was written here in Morse's familiar scrawl would be for him. And then there'd been a pang of disappointment, the observation that it was a heartbreakingly thin envelope with a single page inside, and then a painful opening — _Dear Peter,_ it began, _I'm sorry to interrupt the happiness I hope you've been enjoying with your family_ — and then the news of Mr. Bright's impending retirement. _I just thought you'd like to know, in case you're still sparing us a thought now and then,_ Morse had written. Jakes had been painfully disappointed then, not just from the news but from the otherwise utter emptiness of the page, the timeline that Morse had opened up by getting in touch again but left vacant and unclear, that Morse had taken the time to write to him but not to tell him about anything else in his life. He'd folded the letter back into the envelope and stuffed it into the drawer where the uncashed bonds and that other single letter about Joan's departure were hiding.

"You're not just going to stand there and stare at it without opening, are you?" Jacqueline said despairingly, sitting down on the arm of the sofa. 

Jakes stared at the envelope a while longer. This one had been redirected at least two or three times — his old Chicago address was in Hope's father's handwriting again, the original one from Morse taped over with his new address. He slid his finger under the crease of the flap and pulled it open slowly, unfolded the single page inside, let his lips form the words silently. He was half-aware of Jacqueline watching him curiously, _Turandot_ still spinning away lazily on the turntable in the corner. "Is everything alright?" she asked. When he didn't respond, she sighed. "I'm not stupid, Peter. I can recognize the address."

Jakes tucked the letter back inside and sauntered to the window, opened it a crack, pulled out a cigarette. Jacqueline hated smoke in the apartment. "Yes," he said, lighting it and staring out past the balcony. "Mr. Bright, my old chief superintendent in Oxford, he's retiring. End of the year."

Jacqueline crossed the living room to stand across from him, folded her arms, looked out the window too. "What's Morse writing to you about that for?"

He shrugged. "Just wanted to tell me, I suppose." Flicked the ash off. "He said there's going to be a send-off next month. Supposed to be a big event, thought maybe I'd like to know about it." He took another drag on the cigarette, breathed it out slowly. Jacqueline opened the window further. "Don't know why, after all this time."

"He's inviting you, you know," Jacqueline said, looking at him. 

"Yeah." Another puff. "I know."

"Are you going to go?"

Did he want to? Jakes wasn't sure. He missed Oxford, and he certainly wished at times that he was back at Cowley, wanted nothing more than for the ever popular Prince Philip moniker to be replaced by Morse's innocent know-it-all speculations and theories. But he'd moved for a fresh start. Oxford was bound to upset him. "I'd have to take time off," he said, pulling the window closed a little. "Don't look like that," he added, seeing Jacqueline's frown. "It's freezing out."

"That wasn't an answer," she said.

"I suppose I would." He let himself say it without thinking. If it was what he really wanted, it was out there now, no taking it back or pretending he didn't care. "Just to see them again. He's a good man, Mr. Bright." He ground out the cigarette in the ashtray, glanced up at Jacqueline. "I don't suppose you'd want to come along."

Taken aback, she let out a small laugh. "Me?"

"Yes, you."

She unfolded her arms, let them hang at her side. "What would you want me in Oxford for? They don't know who I am, do they?"

Jakes shrugged again. "You could meet them. Thursday, Morse. You'd get on with them, I expect." He paused for a moment, letting the record fill in their silence. _Turandot_ was still playing, Calaf straining away in his aria. Jakes remembered the first time he'd been to her apartment, how he'd watched in hypnotized fascination as she poured them both a drink, plopped the record on the player, mouthed along to all the words. He couldn't believe anyone could love an opera so much they'd learn all the lines. "I suppose I just thought you might appreciate a return to Oxford."

Jacqueline chewed on her lip. She pulled the window shut, curled her fingertips around the edge of her cardigan sleeves. "I don't know," she admitted, and Jakes was caught by the apprehension in her voice. Sympathy overwhelmed him for a moment — after all, he could understand her uncertainty — one didn't just uproot and move abroad for no reason, he knew — and he longed to press for answers just this once. But she hardly let on, always replied in ways that left him feeling satisfied even if she'd barely addressed the question at hand, always a _not now,_ always a _there's nothing to tell._ And she'd do the same for him. 

He stepped forward, put his hands on her waist. "You don't have to," he said, turning them around until his back was to the wall.

She looked up at him, searched his face. "Do you want me to come?"

He couldn't answer for a bit. _Don't bother,_ he wanted to say, because he didn't want to answer questions and he didn't want any more sympathy from any of them. _Yes,_ he almost blurted, because he wanted them to meet her, wanted her to meet them and to meet the man who got him to actually tolerate opera. _Please come,_ he nearly begged, selfishly, he thought, because it was clear she had her reservations, but at least he wouldn't be facing that place, that return, alone. 

"There's no real harm in it, is there?" he said finally.

A slow smile spread across Jacqueline's face. "I'll go, then," she said, wrapping her arms behind his neck. "It's important to you. I'll go." 

Jakes pulled her close to him, let her head fall against his shoulder. He turned and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Thank you," he whispered into her hair. They swayed gently in place, _Nessun dorma_ echoing in the apartment behind them. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, inhaled deeply. He held her against him, tender. After dinner, when she seated herself at the piano to practice a bit more, he watched her, transfixed, for a few minutes until she lost track of him, then went into their room, sat up against the side of the bed. There were four of them now, notes from Morse, three of them already folded up and holed away in the back of the bedside drawer. He tossed the latest one in and closed it again. Downed the rest of his drink, stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray next to the bed.

He'd had nightmares nonstop for weeks after Blenheim Vale, woken up with sweat sticking his sheets to his body. A near-constant headache at work, the hint of a tremor nagging in his hands sometimes, itching eyes from the exhaustion. He'd spent more than a few hours' time locked in the bathroom at the nick, leaning up against the door, waiting until he could breathe again. Mr. Bright had offered him compassionate leave multiple times, stopping eventually when it became clear the offer would never be picked up. And then, when it had started to subside, Division had opened the investigation, dredged it all up again, forced him to relive the entire miserable experience all over again. The nightmares had started up again, keeping him up, taken him weeks to recover, cycled around once every couple of months until he and Hope finally left, abandoned the police, the discomfiting frenzy of it all. 

They'd almost completely stopped, just like that, once they'd moved. He'd woken up once or twice with a pounding heart, shaking, about a year after the whole thing had happened. Hope had rolled over in bed, reached out to him, pulled him back. "Come here," she'd whispered sleepily, tugging at his wrist until he'd laid down again. He never told her what had happened. Not from twenty years ago, not from just earlier that year. He'd never explained those rare sleepless nights to her, never why it got worse when it did. 

Jacqueline came in, laid down on her stomach across the bed, placed her lips by his ear. "Are you just going to sit there?" she murmured.

Jakes stood up finally, unbuttoned his shirt in front of the bathroom mirror. Surely they wouldn't start up again, not now. He'd held them at bay for years until that awful case had brought them back again. He could certainly manage to keep them away now.

* * *

It was Jacqueline who woke him up. He rolled over, half-awake, sat up when he saw the dim light of her bedside lamp. Picked up his watch from the bedside table and squinted at it. Barely past three.

"Jackie," he croaked, sitting up. Her knees were up, a score spread open across the her lap. She wiggled a pencil back and forth between her fingers. "What's this?"

"Sorry," she whispered, even though there was no one else to wake up. "I'll move outside." 

"No, no, no." Jakes propped himself up on an elbow, took at look at the music laid out in front of her. "You should get some sleep. You're working tomorrow, aren't you?"

She nodded, eyes still roaming over the pages, free hand twitching in the air, feeling out the chords. "I'll fall asleep."

He pulled the book off her lap, slapped it closed. Pulled her in, head in the crook between his neck and shoulder, stroked her hair, just like Hope had done for him those few times he'd woken up. "Come on. What's keeping you up?"

"It's nothing." Her shoulders tightened, reached her arm around his chest. "Just a dream."

Jakes sighed, unsure of what to say. It wasn't like he would tell her everything. "Sleep well, then," he said, wrapping his arms around her. He felt her face burying into his chest, her nose rubbing up against his collarbone, waited for her breathing to slow down.

It had happened before. Where Jakes always found himself awake and staring idly at his walls, she was always up studying, listening to music in her head. The first night they'd spent together, Jacqueline had awoken in the middle of the night. They'd been at his place, had a drink, fallen asleep together, her body pressed into the corner between the wall and his tiny bed. He'd felt the shift in the mattress, the covers moving as she had silently extracted herself from the bed and tiptoed through the rest of the apartment. He'd heard her, soles of her bare feet sticking to the hardwood flooring in the humid air that drifted in through the window, cracked open a fraction of an inch, stopping and bending down to pick up her blouse, wandering through his living room and ending in front of the window, shirt hanging, open, off her shoulders.

"Jacqueline," he'd whispered, barely loud enough to carry through the bedroom doorway. She'd ignored him — probably hadn't heard him — and stayed there, motionless, standing in front of the window. He'd gotten out of bed — it had been freezing too, and raining that night, hadn't felt like it was supposed to be April, not with the wind howling along the way it did and the rain lashing against the window — tugged the sheets along with him, approached her, tapped her on the shoulder. 

She'd turned to look at him, looked like she'd been crying, pulled her shirt around her tighter. "Peter," she had breathed, more for herself than for him, he thought. "Did I wake you?"

He'd draped the sheet around her shoulders, pulled the edges together for her to hold, held his hand against the small of her back as they returned to the bedroom. Climbed back into bed, lifted the duvet. He hadn't asked questions then, hadn't pressed her for why she'd woken up, didn't press her when she continued to wake up every few weeks, frustrated and unable to sleep. That night had defined their relationship, made it about boundaries, not asking questions, unable to share and speak to each other about the things they needed off their chest the most.

He had remembered what he'd felt the night they'd met. The way he had wanted to get drunk, kiss her, hold her face in his hands and tell her everything. Start it off right, reveal all his cards, let her know he was spoiled goods. She'd seen him, all of him. There was no trying to hide himself from her, not the almost-faded scars from the split skin on the back of his thighs, his lower back. Other girls had seen them, asked him about them with coy smiles, grinned when he made something up about a case. She’d only touched them once, felt them out with her fingers, kissing him and burying her face in his neck. Lying there in his bed, arm around her as her lashes tickled his skin every time she blinked, he had wanted to tell her. _I was nine,_ he wanted to start. Blenheim Vale, the first time. Blenheim Vale, the second time. Spending weeks waking up early — Hell, it wasn't like he wasn't already awake — to drive down to the prison. Running away. Hope. Angela. But she didn't ask. 

"Peter," she whispered suddenly, her lips ghosting over his skin.

He pulled his hand up higher, twisted strands of hair between his fingers. "Jackie," he whispered back.

"Do you really miss Oxford?"

His breath caught in his throat. He couldn't deny the joyful twist of his stomach when he'd seen letters from Morse. He couldn't ignore how miserable the last few months in Wyoming had been, how much he dreaded walking trying to fight the wind in the morning. But he also couldn't forget the way walking through Oxford made him numb, made him want to run away and hide. 

"Do you?"

She didn't answer. He didn't push it.

* * *

The party for Mr. Bright was busy and full of brass, officers from Division and other stations. Morse couldn't help thinking, surveying the room over the rim of his whiskey glass, that at least half of the ranking officers here had helped _lose_ his sergeant's exam, that most of them probably knew he was and hated him for it. He was grateful that Trewlove was staying near him, cradling her glass in her hand as the two of them leant against the wall next to the bar. 

"What do you suppose it'll be like after he's gone?" she asked, picking at her nails with her free hand. "Who will replace him?"

Morse shrugged. "Don't know." He searched the room for Strange — there, almost on the opposite side, chuckling with a group of higher-ups. Unsurprising, Morse thought. Freemasonry was treating him well. "Don't suppose they'll like me much, though."

Trewlove _tsk_ed. "Don't say things like that," she admonished. "Bright warmed up to you, you said so yourself."

"Certainly won't be someone I get along with easily, then," he said. "People like you, people I like working with, they never end up in those positions." He straightened up, seeing Strange weaving through the mass of officers towards him, raised his glass in acknowledgement.

"Hello, matey," Strange said, grinning widely at them. "Enjoying yourself?"

Trewlove folded her arms and nodded, embarrassed and clearly lying. Morse didn't blame her; most people in the room would probably ask her whose wife she was. "It's alright," he settled, tossing back the rest of his drink. He'd need another, he figured.

Strange didn't notice. "Seen Thursday anywhere? I've got news for him."

"He's somewhere with Bright's crowd," Trewlove said. "What's the news?"

"Well," and Strange shuffled closer, closing the circle, "guess who I've just seen?" He watched their faces for a reaction; seeing none, he continued. "Jakes! Mind, I'm not sure, I think — it was just a glimpse, but I'm pretty sure I just saw him."

Trewlove looked up at Morse, incredulous. "Jakes? Isn't he the sergeant who left shortly after I came to Cowley?"

Morse felt like someone had poured glue through his insides. He couldn't think of words, let alone speak them; his breath hitched in the back of his throat and he had to tell himself to inhale. It was like his entire body stopped working, he felt, wiggling his fingers to make sure they were still there, that he was still alive and conscious. So Jakes had received his letters — or at least, heard from _someone_ — and decided to come. _Unbelievable,_ he thought, it was just like Jakes to receive news and ignore it, then show up like this, unannounced, just to mess with them. He needed to see him for himself. So when the ability to move his mouth finally returned, Morse coughed and said, "Where?"

"Dunno by now," Strange said, turning to watch the people around him. He gestured vaguely. "Somewhere by the entrance, though. Looked like he'd just walked in. Got his girl with him, I think." 

"Isn't that him right there?" Trewlove said, pointing. Strange and Morse followed her finger, picked out a thin, lanky man standing with his back to them, arm around the woman next to him. Thursday was there, too, and Mr. Bright, both engrossed in lively conversation. "Looks like he's found them already."

Morse struggled to breathe again. He was back then. There was no questioning that wiry frame, that bony hand wrapped around the glass, that slick, dark hair. His face must have betrayed his shock, because Strange finally interrupted his milling thoughts. "You alright, matey?"

"Just surprised," Morse said.

Strange nodded. "Me too," he said, taking a sip of his drink. "I can't imagine how he knew about this. He's been abroad, hasn't he?"

"Yeah." Morse exhaled slowly, setting his glass down for a moment and rubbing his forehead. Was he fooling himself? Jakes looked a bit tanner than he remembered — barely — but no longer that pale shade of anemia that they shared, the sign of a life spent in rainy English summers. "I wrote to him at the start of the year when Mr. Bright announced his retirement."

"Didn't know you still talked to each other," Strange remarked curiously, clearly wondering how the two of them had remained friends. 

"We don't," Morse muttered. "He ignored it. I thought he did, at least." He couldn't take his eyes off of him, his stance, the way he held his free hand in his pocket so confidently after shaking someone's hand. It was disgusting, he thought, how Jakes could just leave and come back with the same coolheaded swagger. They way he turned around, regarded the room with narrow eyes.

Strange waved to catch his attention; Jakes's mouth curved into that sly smile, that look like he was amused by something no one else knew about. He exchanged a few more words with Thursday and Mr. Bright, then gently pulled on the girl's arm, leading her away.

"Hello, matey," Strange said as soon as Jakes was in range, clapping him on the back. "What a celebration, if you've come to visit us."

"Congratulations are overdue," Jakes said, raising his glass to Strange. "I hear you were my replacement."

Strange grinned. "Big shoes to fill."

"And to you, Morse," Jakes added, fixing him with his stare. "You passed the exam, then."

Morse swallowed. The words caught in the back of his throat and he forced himself to cough. He'd only had a chance to mention the sergeant's exam in the letter he'd sent, never followed up with the news. "Well, not quite."

"They lost the exam," Trewlove said.

Jakes frowned. "That's your problem, isn't it," he said. "Too many enemies in the higher-ups. No harm, though, if you've made it either way."

Morse looked away, handed his glass to the bartender for a refill. "This Hope, then?" he asked, gesturing to the woman standing behind Jakes.

Jakes's face darkened, a flicker of sadness in his eyes. "Jacqueline," he said quickly, stepping aside and reaching for her hand. The woman came forward, smiled shyly. "I think the two of you would get along."

She shook Morse's hand. "Jacqueline," she said. "Peter's told me so much about you."

Morse couldn't believe his ears. "About me?"

"I'm telling you," Jakes said to Strange, "if you didn't know who she was, you'd think you were talking to Morse."

"He says this to me all the time," Jacqueline said, shaking hands with Strange and Trewlove.

"Does he?" Morse picked up his drink. He looked over at Jakes, who flashed him a quirky smile. "How long are you here for?" 

Jakes held up his finger. "A week and a half. We thought I might get a chance to see some of you again."

"We'll have to get a drink, then, matey," Strange said cheerfully. "Just like old times."

Morse couldn't ignore the slight flush he felt in his cheeks when Jakes made eye contact with him, the silent question hidden in his face, the invitation lying there, waiting to be accepted. _Just like old times._ Just like old times, all right. That ship had sailed. "Well, drop me a line." He choked the words out, downed his whole drink and nodded to Jacqueline as he slipped out of the little circle that had formed, tried to ignore the look in Jakes's eyes. "I'll see you, then."

Trewlove was behind him as he wandered into the garden out back, held out another whiskey to him. He held up his hand, then thought better of it and took it with a mumbled _thanks._ "Everything okay?" she asked.

He shook his head. "It's just a shock, seeing him. It's been a long time." Trewlove said nothing, only stood there next to him as if waiting for him to confess. "Things were — neither of us were exactly well, were we, when he left. It surely brought us closer together — we used to hate each other — but it's hard to separate the events from the person. You heard about Blenheim Vale?"

Stupid question, he realized, after he asked. Trewlove glanced at him quizzically. "I heard something about it," she said, bending down to examine a rosebush. "But I don't know anything about it."

"You wouldn't." He took a gulp of whiskey, relished the burn it left. "It was terrible. They sealed the files after it happened." He swallowed. "I did time."

Trewlove stared. "Should you be telling me this?"

Morse snorted. "It's not legal, officially, of course," he scoffed, "but the whole thing was — was totally wrong. I hardly think an extra WPC knowing about it would cause any greater offense." He paused, reflecting. "It's not my story to tell, though. Not all of it, at least. We've just — we've been through a lot, Jakes and I, on-duty together, haven't we, but I told him about Mr. Bright retiring twice and he never replied. And he shows up here with this Jacqueline, who certainly isn't from Wyoming, when his better half was supposedly named Hope, without telling me any of this." He buried his face in his hands for a few seconds, groaned. "Why didn't he _tell me_ anything? I reached out to him!"

"So you're angry," Trewlove said, maintaining an impressively steady expression. He wasn't sure how many times he'd lost it like that in front of her, but she deserved a day off for handling it anyway.

"I'm not angry," he sighed. 

"Jealous, then?"

"Jealous? Of what?"

"That he might have come back and met a girl, but didn't stop to see you."

He finished his drink. "I don't — I don't know." 

"Want another?" She pointed to the empty glass. He shook his head no. "You ought to see him, then." She looked up at him earnestly. "There's things you can't very well say in a letter. Just give him a chance, ask him about it. Anyway, if the two of you are such _mates,_ maybe you just need to talk to him."

Morse rolled his eyes, pivoted on his heel. "You've a lot of ideas, for someone of your rank."

Trewlove flashed him a smile, took his glass as she started back inside. "I learned it from you," she said cheekily. Then, over her shoulder, with an impish grin, "Sir. I'll see you back inside."

* * *

The house was her father's, Jacqueline had explained when they'd arrived, caught a taxi to the place. She'd reached her hand into the mail slot, untaped the key from inside the door, dropped it in her purse. There had been stray letters on the foyer floor, all addressed to Mr. Steven Hallward, Jakes had noticed when he set down their cases and gathered the mail together. One of them had a postmark at least five months old. "They're Dad's," Jacqueline had said brusquely, shuffling through them and tossing them on the dresser by the door, a hint of irritation in her voice. 

Now, returning from the celebration, she grabbed his arm, swaying a bit from the drink and weary of the dark, as they walked up the path to the door. Jacqueline had such an awful tolerance for someone who had such a taste for liquor, Jakes thought to himself, fighting to keep from smiling. She dug the key out, pressed it into his hand and let him unlock the door. He pushed the door open and watched as she whisked through the place, sank into the sofa, chin propped on her forearms.

"Missed them, have you?" she said lazily, peering at him over her arms.

He chose not to answer, stood by the garden door and lit a cigarette instead. 

"As you remember?"

Jakes looked down and nodded, tapped the ash off. "Yeah," he said, his voice a bit raspy. "Just as I remember."

Jacqueline stood suddenly and walked in front of him, pushed the door further open and waved her hand through the smoke. "I didn't tell you," she said abruptly, gazing out at the neglected garden, now nothing more than dried leaves and dead flowers, "yesterday, when we got here. I used to live here."

He shot her an incredulous look. "What, you used to live here?"

"Yeah." She ran her fingernail along the wood grain of the doorjamb. "Lived here while I did my A-levels, moved out when I went to school." 

Jakes glanced around, gestured to the open space of the house. "This as you remember?"

Jacqueline sighed. It was like an exodus to Jakes, the way her eyes roamed about the furniture and the landscaping, the way her mouth hung, half open, ready to spill. An exodus. "I haven't thought about Oxford for a long time," she said. "Most things are as I remember." She spun around, pointed at the living room. "My piano used to be there; that much has changed."

He stared at her, replayed that sigh of hers, the tightened corners of her mouth, words hanging on her lips. There was so much she wanted to say, so much he wanted to hear from her. He wanted her to tell him about the house, tell him about what it was like studying here, what the garden looked like when it still grew flowers. _Tell me about Oxford Jacqueline,_ he wanted to say. But the words stayed secret, sealed away as she pressed her lips together and frowned. 

"You know that officer we met when you were saying hello to Mr. Bright?" she said.

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"He said his name was Fordham. DCI Fordham, I think."

Jakes stubbed out his cigarette, raised his eyebrows. "Yeah, what about him?"

"Did you ever meet him? When you were still working out here?" Her fingers toyed with the seams of her dress, arms wrapped nervously around her waist.

He shook his head. "Don't really remember. Why? What're you on about?"

"It's nothing," she said, shuffling forward and leaning into him. She put her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes. "I just thought I used to know him."

"Like you used to know me?" Jakes said, thinking about that first night they'd met. Months later, and he had still barely figured out how she'd known his name. He knew it had to do with a case he worked, but they all blurred into one after a point. Not every case was a serial murderer obsessed with opera references. 

"Yeah," she murmured sleepily, rocking back and forth, body draped around his. 

He held Jacqueline by the waist, inhaled the scent of her hair, her perfume, her three gins from earlier in the evening. "Can you close the door?" she mumbled, tightening her embrace and sighing heavily. There it was again, that emotional exodus. She did this all the time, went in for a hug, then just hung there, dead weight, clung to him like a baby koala while he'd pull the needle off the record player, hang the dishtowel up, close the window. So he did, reached out for the handle and pulled the garden door shut. He didn't dislike it — if anything, it was endearing, the way she let him hold her — but it always threw him for a loop, the way she'd just suddenly hunger for affection like that. And then she'd stand again, straighten up and kiss him, smile like she'd just been restarted, laugh and giggle like she hadn't just burnt out in front of him.

"Do you want to go upstairs?" Jakes whispered, rubbing his hand across her back. 

She nodded, her chin pressing into the back of his shoulder. 

His hand found its way to hers, held it by the fingers. "Come on," he said, leading her through the living room and up the stairs, guiding her past the dim landing and into their bedroom. "Watch the steps."

Jacqueline kissed him once they were there, still clinging to him, fingers smoothing his collar down and feeling the knot of his tie. It was insane, he thought, the way she did all of this without speaking a word, just kissed him and pulled away, waited for him to say something, do something, reply. "I love you, you know," she said, her voice cracked and dry.

He kissed her face, placed it delicately at the peak of her left cheekbone. "I know," he said. 

She was asleep on top of the covers by the time he finished unbuttoning his shirt, small and peaceful. He tugged the sheets out from under her, got into bed, pulled the covers back over both of them.

She woke him up again in the middle of the night, the moonlight cutting a white-grey streak of light down the middle of the room. "Peter," she whispered, reaching out for his hand.

He let her take it, eyes still closed. "What?"

"Do you trust me?"

He opened his eyes and rolled over to look at her. "Of course."

She twisted around until she was facing him, took in his face, still half-asleep. "I'm going to tell you something."

"Okay."

"DCI Fordham."

"What about him?"

Jacqueline took a deep breath, swallowed, and suddenly Jakes was wide-awake. This was it, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, a heart-to-heart between them. He was ready for whatever she was about to say.

"I used to work for him."

_Never mind,_ Jakes thought to himself, processing what she'd just said. He hadn't been ready.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway i should mention that when i SAY i've been thinking about this plotline for a week i really mean that i've been thinking about the introduction and climax but haven't been thinking about the pacing of like.....anything.......im finding it inexplicably difficult to write morse scenes but it's probably bc i've been doing 2 semesters of pure original writing with all ocs....and now i dont know how to write fanfic lmao.....also i haven't proofread this so yikes @ myself... lol
> 
> random side note but taylor swift's new cruel summer is an absolute drive and i've been losing my mind listening to it lmao,,, also had to lie down today because i was just thinking about a peter jakes didn't leave oxford au following canticle where he stayed with morse while he was coming down from the trip and i was like aaaa!!!!!!!!! jesus!!! two tortured souls!!!! i need emotional outpouring and soft hand-holding! 
> 
> anyway as uszhh (idk how to spell that sound but it's like short for usual u know?? but like ironically lol omg please just ignore me) my tumblr is [here](http://petersjakes.tumblr.com). have a good one my friends :)


	3. two.

**february, 1972**

_"I love you." _

_He let himself say it so easily, didn't care about the finesse of it. Was it too soon? He just wanted to say it in the moment, let her know that he wasn't just coming to the bar every night to fuel some lingering alcoholism and the pathological desire to flirt. He said it, directing it to at the glass in front of him, tilted his head a little to see her reaction._

_Jacqueline sat in silence for a moment, almost stunned, before her cheeks pulled up in a smile and she giggled a little. She knocked back the rest of her gin. "Okay," she said, still grinning with stupid joy. "Thanks." She was on her second drink, already nearing the threshold between tipsy and drunk. _

_Jakes sat back. "Are you going to say anything?" _

_She looked at him, started laughing again. It continued; he'd say something and watch as her face curved into an intoxicated smile. She ordered a third drink. Jakes waited until she was distracted, then asked the bartender to replace it with water, watched as she drank the whole glass and made a face at the unusual taste._

_They left the bar just as it closed. Jakes shrugged his coat on, waited for her to finish talking to the bartender, held her coat out as she came towards him. "You'll be all right getting home?" he asked, holding the door open for her. Over the last two weeks that he'd been buying her drinks, she'd refused his accompaniment home every time, telling him to call her house phone in half an hour every night instead._

_She stopped outside and beamed at him, reached out for his hands. They stood together, Jacqueline trembling a little in the wind, her hands in his. "Peter," she said._

_"Jackie."_

_"Come here," she whispered, giggling again. _

_Jakes tipped his head forward. "What?" _

_She dropped his hands, pulled him forward, and kissed him. It was gentle and sloppy, and her hands were firmly set against his face, and he could feel the calluses on the minor knuckles of her thumbs, rubbing against his cheeks. She pulled away, breathless, licked her lips. _

_He held her wrists in his hands, tugged them away from his face. Placed them on his waist, either side, mirrored her with his own hands, leaned towards her to kiss her again. _

_"Can I come home with you?" she said, at the same time he said, "Come home with me."_

_In Oxford, it never happened this way. He didn't date, not like this; he didn't wait two weeks to take a girl home. They didn't say it to each other, it just_ happened,_ she'd just end up at his place. They'd sleep together, she'd leave in the morning. Hope, he'd asked her to leave a number, asked her to stay a bit longer, until finally she'd somehow moved in without either of them noticing. _

_Jacqueline kissed him as soon as they were in the door, let him guide her through his dark apartment, undid his suspenders, untucked his shirt, let him undo the clasp at the top of her dress. He found her appendectomy scar just inside the bone of her left hip, watched as she tensed up as he put his hands on her bare skin. She felt the tightened skin on his back, the scars of his childhood. They laid together in bed, face-to-face. She shivered. He tucked the sheets around her, cradled her face when she folded her hands under one cheek._

_"I wouldn't stay late at that bar every night if I didn't love you, too," she murmured sleepily._

_He played with her hair until her breath slowed, and then let himself fall asleep. He wanted her to stay in the morning. He wanted her to come back again tomorrow night, and stay longer in the morning. He wanted her to stay later and later every day, until they'd wake up one morning and realize she'd moved in. They deserved each other, two scars who loved each other._

* * *

**november, 1972**

Jacqueline was still fast asleep when Jakes awoke. He wasn't surprised; their conversation hours earlier, in the middle of the night, had drained her, left her hollow and withered. She'd sighed and taken a breath, paused, and he had waited for her to start talking again, to start the monologue again, to feed his hunger for her past and everything that had made her into who she was, until the pause dragged on longer and longer and he realized she'd fallen asleep again, her hand still resting on his face, her lips slightly parted, her exhales getting easier and easier. 

He sat up slowly, careful not to disturb her, and watched her now, stared at her face and her hair and body, backlit by the sunlight streaming through the windows between the undrawn curtains. He glanced at his watch — quarter to ten, _God_, it felt good to wake up late and not think about stupid Montgomery and what was going on at work — then back at Jacqueline, statuesque, lying there, unbothered by the sunlight. She clearly hadn't slept well — the contented posture she'd fallen asleep with again last night was gone, and Jakes was sure she'd kicked him by accident at some point — but here she was, peaceful again, twisted up in the bedsheets, her limbs folded over each other, like a painting. 

Her eyes opened when he finally threw the duvet off and kicked his legs over the edge of the bed. She stared at him for a moment, and he stared back over his shoulder. "Morning," he said, twisting around to look at her better.

"What time is it?"

"Almost ten."

She made a face and sat up slowly, pulling her hair away from her face. The bedsheets had left a reddish-purple mark on her right cheek where they'd bunched up under her face. "What are you doing still in bed?"

Jakes smiled at her. He hated how she made him soft. "Maybe I was waiting for you to wake up," he said, reaching forward to pull a piece of fluff out of her hair. 

Jacqueline snorted and swatted his hand away from her face. "Creep," she muttered, suppressing a smile as she pulled the sheets out from around her legs, looked down at the dress she was still wearing. "You let me sleep in my clothes."

"You were tired." They weren't going to talk about the night before, then, about how she'd awoken and grabbed at his wrist with such urgency. Jakes watched as she stood and walked across the room to the case, pulled out her dressing gown and tossed it over the arm of the chair in the corner. "I didn't want to wake you."

She didn't take the bait — not that Jakes thought she would — ignored him as she reached up behind her neck to unzip her dress, stripped down, pulled the robe around her. _Statuesque,_ again, he thought. She was a sculpture, a nymph, hiding her secrets in little nooks and crannies around the house, around the town, everywhere, ready to reveal them if he was patient enough. Jakes couldn't wait to see her have an actual conversation with Morse. 

They had tea on the veranda together, Jacqueline wrapping a blanket around her shoulders — so cold, she kept complaining, even though they'd both weathered far worse in Chicago at this point — looking out at the plain between her house and the next house over, watching the birds. 

"I like when you're not on-call at work," Jacqueline said, lacing her fingers together around the cup in her hands. "I mean, I'm glad you do what you do," she added quickly, glancing over at Jakes to gauge his reaction. "It's just nice not to worry about it."

Jakes took a sip of his tea. "I do, too," he said, swirling the teabag around in his cup.

It wasn't that he didn't like his job. He loved it, in Oxford and Chicago, and as much as he'd loved Wyoming, he'd missed it sorely. He hated the grisliness, the tension, the clenching of his stomach every time he came across an ugly scene, the tragedy of it all; but he loved it, he loved it so much, everything it meant to him, the life he had built for himself and the way it made him feel, brilliant and powerful. 

The fact was that Chicago wasn't Oxford, not just in the crime. It wasn't the same in the people. He would have rather thrown himself under the bus than admit it to anyone: he had a partner-in-crime in Oxford, not in Chicago. He had someone to keep him in check, remind him how ordinary he was when he got too high. Montgomery didn't do that — he didn't know _how_ to, not in the way Morse did, didn't have that endless wealth of useless knowledge and precocious innocence. There was no one to challenge him when things were too simple. The unexpected ringing of the phone to call him into a new crime scene didn't excite him, it only bored him, made him dread the irritating nicknames and impenetrability — the _beigeness_ — of the stupidity. 

Jacqueline set her tea down on the table between them and pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. "What do you want to do today? I was thinking I might go back to Trinity, see who's still there. I wasn't sure if you'd like to come. Thought you might want to talk to them instead."

"Maybe," Jakes said. "If they're not terribly busy this evening. I might get a drink with a few of them." He looked over at Jacqueline. "You should come. I want you and Morse to get a chance to talk to each other."

"He seemed surprised to see you last night."

"I didn't tell him I was coming."

Jacqueline sat up straight, opened her mouth to say something, closed it again. She pressed her lips together. "He thought I was Hope."

Jakes didn't say anything. He couldn't. He couldn't betray Jacqueline, couldn't betray Hope — no, he couldn't betray _himself_ — like that. She didn't say it with jealousy, just put it out there, threw out a hundred-pound note and waited for him to take it, innocuous, unwanting. In his cynical universe, the thought that maybe the night before was a means to an end, an equal exchange. She had given him one of her secrets in exchange for his. But she didn't exist in his cynical universe. 

"He never met her," Jakes said. "He must have assumed you were her." He braced himself for the follow-up. It never came; she only turned to look at him. "She was why I left Oxford in the first place."

"I know," Jacqueline said. Of course she knew. She'd caught sight of the few photos he kept tucked around his apartment before they had started living together. He had never provided a name for the woman in the photos, but Jacqueline wasn't an idiot. Any fool could have put the two together. 

"I never told him we'd separated." 

He _had_ written a letter — multiple, even, letter_s_, plural — after it had happened. He tried it over and over, during sleepless nights, drunken stupors, those unbearable swells of sadness. It was almost funny, that the implicit trust, the bond they shared didn't make sharing any easier, that the man whose entire personality revolved around devouring books in a myriad of languages couldn't write letters more than a few sentences long and that he, Peter Jakes, whose conversational skills rested on snark and banter, couldn't string together enough words to explain anything more. What was so hard about it, anyway? Was it really that difficult to say, at the very least, _her name is Angela_, that _Hope and I have separated,_ that _I'm moving to Chicago_? The letters felt like diary entries, fixating, the same sentence in different words.

"I started seeing her just before I left Oxford, on and off," Jakes said, starting over. Jacqueline hummed. "Her family was in Wyoming — they had a cattle ranch there — and we thought we would move out there. Her father agreed to take me on. It was an opportunity I couldn't pass up, a chance to start fresh, start over again, marry her and start our own family." He rubbed the bare skin on his ring finger. He'd barely worn the band for half a year. It lived in his bedside drawer now, untouched.

He was unable to continue, simply unable get the words out. Jacqueline watched him, he could see her out of the corner of his eye. "You don't have to," she said finally, taking mercy on him, bringing her cup to her lips. 

"We had a baby," Jakes blurted, before his mind could process it. "Together. That's why I moved with her." He put the cup on the table, turned it back and forth on its rim. "And then we didn't."

Jacqueline turned to look at him, her brows raised sharply, eyes wide, severe. She didn't say anything. Jakes looked back, finally, straight in her eyes, waited for the response, for the _why,_ for the _what happened?_ He wanted so badly for her to say it, so he could be angry and sad, so he could emote. One event to replace the other. One tragedy for him to fixate on so he could forget another. He needed the pain in his past. It kept him human. _Ask me,_ he begged silently. It was time to share. They had pulled at one loose thread. He needed to unravel the whole damn quilt now.

But she didn't. So he didn't tell her, and he wasn't angry, and he wasn't sad. 

"I didn't tell Morse," he said, when the window of opportunity passed. "I thought I should. I didn't know how to. We don't talk like that." 

"He's going to want to know," she said. "He seemed annoyed yesterday that I wasn't Hope."

"I'll only tell him if he asks," he said. _If._ He wasn't a fool.

Morse would never pry.

* * *

The phone call came just before Morse meant to wake up, when he could barely feel the daylight on his face. He could still feel the slightest fuzz in his mind, at the edges of his vision. Perhaps those last two drinks Trewlove had brought him weren't quite as necessary as he thought they were. He wished the phone would just _stop,_ for once, that he could just ignore it for once, without wondering if he was missing something important.

But it didn't. It kept ringing, shrill and just irritating enough that he finally kicked off his covers and stood, shuffled barefoot out to the living room, and picked it up, receiver in one hand and the hook hanging off the other. Folded his arms against the morning chill, let the cord wind itself around his wrist. "Morse," he huffed.

A double-murder, it was, according to the desk officer on the other end, who told him to take Thursday directly there when he picked him up. "Sounds like a nasty piece of work," he said before hanging up, leaving Morse to sigh heavily into his empty flat, get dressed, eat a slice of untoasted bread so he could say he'd at least eaten something.

Thursday was already waiting for him when he arrived, hat in hand, coat halfway on. "Much in?" he asked from the kitchen, downing a cup of tea and coming back through into the foyer. 

"Double-murder, just in, sir," Morse said, wincing slightly at the thought of what they might have to walk into. The anticipation was worse than the actual scene, most of the time, wondering if he was going to see someone who'd been laundered and turned inside out or if it would just be as simple as someone who'd fallen asleep and never woken up. It was infinitely worse to be the former, especially first thing in the morning, especially when Thursday still continued to ask for updates in his usual conversational manner. Morse still hadn't put his thumb on how his mentor had become the detached force of nature that he was. "Out in Godstow, sir."

Thursday hummed and pocketed his pipe. "Let's go, then."

The scene nearly made him gag when he got there, looking at those two stiff bodies, frozen in fear and silence. He stayed long enough to make eye contact with De Bryn, then turned away quickly, stood at the door and waved for Strange to take his place, strained his ears to hear.

"Mr. and Mrs. Delaney," Strange said, standing next to Thursday. "42 and 39, respectively — found by the milkman this morning. He's in the living room right now; Trewlove is taking his statement." 

"First impressions, manual strangulation," De Bryn said confidently, squatting down by the first body, "for this lady here. Bruising around the neck, looks like a pretty large pair of hands, almost certainly male. Looking at this, rigor has set in — algor mortis would put the time around midnight, give or take one or two hours. They certainly haven't been moved."

Thursday sighed. "Who died first?"

De Bryn straightened up. "I would hazard a guess as to the gentleman, just as it doesn't seem that your man could have strangled the lady first without him putting up a serious fight. He's been throttled, but you can tell he's a bit more beat." Morse grimaced, listening, imagining De Bryn's gestures around Mr. Delaney's battered face. "Blood on the back of the head — it seems that he must have put up a fight, cause of death looks to be blunt force trauma. I'll be able to say more based on defensive wounds and bruising after the postmortem. Shall we say two o'clock?"

"Burglary gone wrong, then?" Strange suggested. "Someone's going through the house, Mr. Delaney hears and gets up to investigate, gets knocked. Mrs. Delaney hears that and they finish her off for good measure."

"Nothing's been taken," Thursday said, glancing through the open patio doors to the living room where Morse was standing. "Least so far as we can see."

Morse took a turn around the living room, stopping to let Max pass through the house with a polite nod. "The child," he said suddenly.

Thursday coughed. "The what, Morse?"

Morse blinked, tried to steady himself, pointed at the mantelpiece. "The child. There's — there's photos on the mantel with a young girl, multiple ones. And I'm sure when we finish looking upstairs, we'll find that they had a child."

"He's right, sir," Strange said, picking one up and looking at it. "But it's not theirs." He turned, led the way up the stairs. "There's a child's room up here, but all the photos suggest she's not theirs."

Thursday strode through the room, picked a photo up off the nightstand. "Strange is right," he said, flipping it around to show Morse.

"These are children's items, though," Morse protested. "A young girl obviously lived here. There's no denying it, is there?"

Strange shrugged. "Could just be a relative's," he said. "A niece, maybe. Or from social services."

Thursday stared at the picture a while longer, then handed it over to Morse. "Find out what you can about that child, though," he said. "Lay your mind to rest on that one."

Morse ended up at the social services office, standing hesitantly at the door. It still made him uncomfortable, seeing Joan, especially when it seemed she had little desire to return to whatever they'd had in the early days. He considered just phoning in his inquiry for a second, but, he figured, hadn't he come out _specifically_ for the possibility of seeing Joan Thursday? She was a heartwarming person, both to listen to and to see, even if they could never work out whatever the nondescript relationship between them was.

"Morse!" Joan exclaimed cheerfully when she saw him on her way towards her desk. "What brings you here?"

Morse smiled thinly. "Miss Thursday." He followed her, kept his distance from her desk, a child waiting to be admonished. "I was wondering if you could do me a favor."

She smirked up at him. "A favor?" Shuffled the stacks on her desks. "What do you need?"

"A Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Delaney." He rooted through his coat pocket and pulled out his notebook. "They were found dead this morning, at their home in Godstow. I believe they might have adopted a child, but no one else was found at the scene."

Joan frowned. "They _might_ have adopted a child?" she repeated disbelievingly. "That's not very conclusive, is it? I'll take a look for you now, but it might not be very helpful."

Morse trailed behind her awkwardly as she stood before the filing cabinets, arms folded, leaning back a bit to see the names printed on the yellowed inserts. She yanked one open, thumbed through the files. "Delaney, you said?" She pulled one out, cradled it to her body, checked the first page. "Here it is, I think. From Godstow, Samuel and Carol. We've got them here." Joan glanced up at Morse to check he was listening, then flipped the page up. "They adopted a girl, just over three years ago."

"Have you got the mother's name?" Morse asked, pen already poised over his notebook. 

Joan pursed her lips and sat down at her desk again, file open in front of her. She slid the paperclip off the top of the papers and sifted through them, shaking her head as she went. "No, not here. The child was adopted from infancy — spent all her life with the Delaneys as her parents — mother gave her up at birth." She handed a form to Morse. "Look, the mother's name has been removed, even."

Morse squinted at the paper and rubbed it absently, cogwheels turning in his mind. "That happens often, does it? The birth mother being removed?"

Joan shook her head again. "Not really, in my experience."

"You just don't seem very concerned with it."

"Well, looking at a few of the papers in this file, I'm not entirely surprised." She pushed a few more pages out of the pile, reading over them with her brow drawn. "The circumstances seem a little out of the ordinary, so it's not entirely unreasonable some details might be unusual. The child was born abroad."

"_Abroad_?"

"She's an American citizen by birth," Joan said. "Perhaps the mother went away and had her, then came back, gave her up? That happens more often than you think, I'm just surprised that she did so with such detail to the legal aspect of it. I mean, her name hasn't simply been blocked out, it's been removed entirely — the form's been printed without it."

"Went away to _America_, though?" Morse handed the paper back to Joan. "That's a long way to go."

"A lot of things happen when women don't want their children," Joan said sadly, her face darkening. "Going to America is just one possibility." She put the papers back together, clipped them again, held out the file to him. "If you want, I'll sign this out to the police for you."

Morse took the file. "Thank you," he said, unable to stop staring at her now. He couldn't help it, not after she'd just said that, dropped that unsaid eulogy for her nonexistent child into their conversation. She hadn't meant to, hadn't meant it like that, he knew, hadn't even realized what she was saying until it had left her mouth. He wondered if she grieved for it, for the child and for her lover and for those months she'd spent in Leamington Spa, no longer Joan Thursday but _just_ Joan Thursday, without a family and without a past. It haunted _him_ sometimes, somehow, that phone call and seeing her, pale and drawn and alone, and seeing her later, the way she looked at him, silently begging him to let it go, to erase every part of his essential being and not ask questions. And then those hauntings would haunt him, the unfair selfishness of it all, the way he was letting himself turn her story into his when the two should and would remain forever separate. 

"Morse," Joan said sharply, watching him, the corners of her mouth upturned ever so slightly. It was gone, then, the glimpse into her locked door. None of it mattered, anyway. She was here. He was here. No regrets. "You're staring at me."

He cleared his throat. "Thank you," he repeated, holding up the file. She giggled as he turned away. He left, got into the car, started the engine. Everything was so unfair. The double-murder, the missing child, the missing mother, Joan. It was all unfair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok big yikes because i was NOT ready for first semester to hit me like that and i hit a big block so this is kind of short and also not that good my brain is totally fried from studying for midterms..........but i figured either i kick the block now or i wait for midterms to be over and then just....never...write...it.... so pray that the next chapter i will get my brain back!!
> 
> (in other news not to uh flex or anything but i DID get full marks on my IR midterm so heh he h ehe)
> 
> anyway as uszzhh my tumblr is [here](http://petersjakes.tumblr.com), reblog my peter jakes hands appreciation posts if u'd like. have a good one friends! :)


	4. three.

Jakes spotted Morse's hunched frame at the end of the bar, his ankles locked together, knees pushed up against the bottom of the counter. A nearly empty glass of whiskey stood to the side; he spotted Morse's other hand over his shoulder, clicking his pen obsessively. _Crosswords_. Jakes snorted, unsurprised. It was nice to see that nothing had changed. Taking Jacqueline's hand in his, he wove through the front room towards the bar, clapping Morse on the back of the shoulder.

"I thought you would be here," he said, holding two fingers up to call over the bartender.

Morse jumped a little and swiveled in his seat. "Peter," he said slowly, eyes wide, like a child caught doing something wrong.

Jakes grinned at his shock and discomfort. He pointed at the drink in front of Morse. "Can I get you another?"

"Oh." Morse picked up his drink, downed it. "Let me. The usual? And for — I'm sorry, Jacqueline, is it?"

Jacqueline leaned forward over the bar, looked across at him, pressed her elbows into the edge of the counter. "Gin and tonic, thanks."

They took their drinks to the table up against the wall, and Jakes imagined for a moment that they were having lunch together, five, six years before, sitting across from each other, speculating on suspects and who was lying and what was happening where and when. Morse took the chair, as always, let Jakes slide into the booth. Jacqueline sat next to him, wrapped her hands around her glass as if it were a cup of tea.

"I'm sorry we didn't get to speak much yesterday," Morse said, raising his glass her direction.

"That's why I thought I'd come with him today." Jacqueline smiled, took a sip of her drink. "Sorry to intrude on your time together. But I must admit, I've been looking forward to meeting you. He thinks about you all the time." With an impish glance over at him, she leaned forward conspiratorially. "He's missed you," she said in a mock whisper.

Jakes tried to avoid Morse's curious gaze, hoping that he'd take Jacqueline's comment for the sarcastic quip it was. She couldn't know, anyway; he didn't tell her about any of the cases he worked on. She didn't deserve to hear about that, the disheartening nature of working for the police. Anyway, he hardly ever mentioned Oxford out loud at home to begin with. Neither of them did; both were far more comfortable consigning their past to disjointed points in time, memorialized by unframed pictures around the apartment. She was perceptive though, and he knew that _she_ knew how much he missed his old job, the people, if not the superfluousness of the town and its dramatic emphasis on its history. (That was Morse's department, after all, wasn't it, the poetry and the Shakespeare allusions, all those philosophers and academics.) "She's joking, obviously," he said. "I'd rather not hear your theories at all."

Morse sat back. "You just didn't like being proven wrong."

"Oh, come on. Nine times out of ten I was right and it _was_ just a robbery gone wrong, or the husband who killed the wife. You were lucky those other times."

"_Luck_ has nothing to do with it!" Morse protested. "It's about careful, critical thinking."

Jakes snorted. "Thinking — you think too much for your own good." He lit a cigarette, pulled the ashtray closer to him, held the box out to Morse, who declined.

"You're still smoking?"

"Oh, come on, we're having drinks," Jakes said, waving his hand around them. "Like the old times. Loosen up a bit, would you? I'm already doing it less."

"He's right," Jacqueline said. "When we first met, he could go through half a pack in a day."

"Still better than before he moved, then. I've seen him go through nearly the whole thing."

"It's the job," Jakes said. "Does a number on you. Consider it earned." Then he kicked himself. Morse would start putting two and two together, start asking if he was back to police work, and why, and what led to it all.

Luckily, Morse only rolled his eyes. Jakes said a silent prayer of thanks. "How _did_ the two of you meet, then?" he asked, looking between the two of them.

"At a bar, actually," Jacqueline said, reaching her hand out distractedly. Jakes took it, equally as absent, then glanced up at Morse instinctively to watch for his reaction. "I was working. I'm — I play the piano in the lounge."

Morse raised his eyebrows. "You're a pianist?"

Jacqueline flushed a little. Jakes couldn't help but smile when he saw it, the excitement pulling at the corners of her eyes, the rosiness, the energy she gave off. She loved when people asked about her music. "Actually, I went to Trinity to study music before I went abroad to do a master's. It's how I ended up there."

"You grew up in Oxford, then. I thought — well, your accent, but I wasn't sure."

Jakes averted his eyes again. He'd known, coming back, seeing Morse, that every conversation would be packed with land mines like this. He was running out of miracles, it seemed, the way Morse was tactfully avoiding asking about Hope just yet, even as opportunity after opportunity presented itself.

"Well, not quite," Jacqueline said, keeping the impending Wyoming question at bay, and Jakes said another silent thank you. "I only came here when I was a teenager. From Hong Kong — my father works for the Trade Commission. My mother thought I might like the chances to study here better, anyway." Jakes felt her grip tighten around his hand; talking about her parents made her tense.

It had all fallen into place last night while she was talking to him in the dark, the way she tiptoed around talking about them. She'd said it so freely, with so little restraint, that Jakes had wondered at some point whether she was sleep-talking, if she knew that she was telling him what she was.

"I used to work for him," she'd said, voice dry and cracking around the corners.

Jakes had rolled onto his side so he could see her face clearly, still holding her hand. "Jackie," he'd said slowly, trying to parse the words in his mind, "what do you mean?"

"I mean that I used to work for him," Jacqueline had repeated, looking at him with a hint of exasperation that assured him she was really awake and talking to him. He'd stared into her eyes, waited for her to look back at him, but she kept shifting away, picking and choosing her next words. They'd laid in total silence for a few minutes; Jakes had held his breath, afraid to break it, waited for her, the authority of it. "Do you remember when we met?" She'd looked at him finally, waited for his face to acknowledge that he did. "I recognized you."

He had moved his head slightly, felt the pillow rubbing under his face, a half-hearted attempt at a nod. He'd always wondered where, how she knew him, which case she was from, but it didn't bother him that he didn't know.

"I was at school. At Trinity. You came one day and waited outside my tutorial." She'd paused, not waiting for him to remember, only thinking to herself. "You waited for my tutorial to end, with the Dean of Students."

Jakes had connected the dots, hazarded a guess. "I was coming to deliver news."

"My mother," Jacqueline had whispered, rubbing her thumb up and down over his knuckles, gentle, anchoring herself. "A car accident." She'd swallowed, and it had echoed in the space between them. "They hadn't stopped."

The details floated around in Jakes's mind, vague and fuzzy. There had been hundreds of car accidents that had crossed his desk, his and everyone else's. "You joined the police because of it," he muttered, trying to put the pieces together. It wasn't uncommon, a someone derailing like that, committing themselves to a new cause. It was a cliché, a formula; point A led to point B. There was someone wracked by tragedy, anger, grief, and they'd join the police, sign themselves up for a crusade, tell themselves it would be fixed. Jakes knew he was one himself.

"I thought it was — I don't know. I thought it was the right thing to do," she'd said. "I was confused." She'd started crying — not sobbing, only crying — cleanly, quietly, just a single tear from the corner of one eye. Jakes had watched it, followed along as it carved tiny path diagonally across her face, reflecting the light. "My mother was part of the reason I was at Trinity. I finished up at school, and then I joined. I didn't know what to do. I was — I was so confused — I thought it was what I wanted. I don't know. You feel like it'll make things better, like you're righting a wrong, like what you're doing now will change what happened then." Her hand had tightened around his; he'd reached over with his free one, wrapped hers in both of his. "I committed myself to law enforcement."

Jakes had lifted his hand to her face, rubbed away a second tear. She'd let go of his hand, mirrored his movement, cupped his face. "You were a WPC," he'd murmured.

"Under DI Fordham," Jacqueline had finished. "It was an odd two years in my life."

"But?"

"It wasn't for me." She'd closed her eyes, smiled to herself. "So I left."

And here it was, the point where Jakes had thought she would open her eyes and start again, put the needle back on the record. She had more to say. But it didn't happen. And now he couldn't help but think about it, how fate had gathered up all the sticks in one hand and let them drop, scatter in organized chaos, how unfair it was, but how it had all converged eventually. Neither of them spoke about their parents — Jacqueline only mentioned her father when he was particularly relevant, hardly even cast a second look at the mail addressed to him when it arrived at her flat, and never acknowledged her mother, only let her exist in a few little photos — and Jakes had just assumed their mutual reluctance to talk about them was for the same reason: that they simply didn't exist anymore, in their lives or otherwise. Yet it was clear, at the same time, that they were different stories, that even though Jacqueline didn't leave room in her life to think of her parents, _she_ still existed in _their_ minds, that Stephen Hallward very well could not know what his daughter looked like, but he still cared for her enough to make sure she was safe. He had chalked it up to it being one of _those_ relationships, that Stephen Hallward had the best of intentions but didn't know how to connect with her, hadn't considered that even if Jacqueline's mother was dead, perhaps she _did_ have a good relationship with her mother, and that she really loved her, until last night. 

Thinking about it, where they came from, how they'd met by pure tragic coincidence six years before _actually _meeting, confused him. The slightly less blurry image of Jacqueline's parents almost made him jealous, made him wish he'd had the same. But he had a vague recollection of going to Trinity and asking to see the Dean about one of the students, waiting outside a professor's door for the tutorial to finish, the professor letting them borrow the room, the shellshocked reaction of the girl to the news of her mother's accident. It would be sick, wouldn't it, he thought, to wish for any of that, for twenty-some wonderful and close years with your mother before she was gone, like someone yanking the carpet out from under you. And then he thought about how if her mother hadn't died like that, she wouldn't have joined the police, maybe wouldn't have even decided to move to America for a fresh start, and they never would have met. He would have gone to the bar with Montgomery that night he'd met her and left it just as pathetic and miserable as before. It was so twisted, thinking about himself, about Jacqueline, about the two of them together, like that. 

When Jakes finally pulled himself out of the thought spiral he'd indulged in, Jacqueline and Morse were smiling, laughing, the topic long gone, a mere fleeting moment on their conversation. "Oh, you sing in the choral association!" she was saying, glowing, so excited to talk about her favorite things with someone who spoke her language. "I love opera."

"Oh, don't get Morse started on opera," Jakes said, inserting himself back into the conversation. He downed the rest of his drink and let go of Jacqueline's hand. "And I can't believe you're still doing that," he added, looking at Morse. "I thought you would have stopped after that nasty business with the — the Tosca business, or whatever, on that case. I'm getting another drink."

Leaning against the bar, waiting for the bartender to come and refill his glass, Jakes decided that it did feel good to be in Oxford. He lit another cigarette, sat on the periphery of the conversation, let Jacqueline and Morse debate Puccini and Wagner and Mahler together, let them talk about the poetry and the architecture and the town. They were two people meant to meet each other, he thought, watching as Jacqueline took a look at Morse's crossword. He was glad he'd come back now. He had missed it so much, hadn't allowed himself to admit it while he was overseas, missed the sound of the pub crowd and the way the cigarette smoke hung around in the humid air differently. It felt safer, warmer. It _was _safe. 

After nearly two hours, Jacqueline stood, planted a kiss on his hairline. "I need some air. I'll let you two have some time to yourselves and walk back myself. I'll leave the back open for you." Jakes watched as she left the table, melted into the other groups and slipped out the door, then glanced at Morse.

"Will she be alright, walking home by herself like that?"

Jakes shrugged. "She doesn't like walking with other people. I think she likes being alone. Gives her some time to think, I suppose."

"I should have guessed that you had a penchant for the scholarly type," Morse said, turning back towards him. 

Jakes snorted, ground out his cigarette in the ashtray, tried to keep from blushing. "I haven't got a 'penchant for the scholarly type,'" he scoffed. "I can't help that she's the only person with half a brain for miles. I need someone to keep me humble, really be my better half." He hoped Morse would rise to the bait; if he was ever going to ask about Hope, now was the time, Jakes thought. Better to do it with a bit of alcohol in the system.

"I didn't realize you'd be coming back for Mr. Bright's retirement. The address was so old — you didn't respond and I just assumed it was no longer current."

"It's not," Jakes said. He ran his fingernail along the grain of the table. "I've moved. The mail was forwarded."

"Oh," said Morse. "You're no longer in Wyoming, then?"

Jakes raised his glass to his lips, took a big swig. "Hope and I separated," he said. _Obviously._ As if he'd just show up with another girl if he and Hope were still together. "I moved. Went back to the police. First love, you know."

Morse cracked a smile. "I'm sorry to hear about Hope."

Jakes looked up at him. "You're not." Then, softening a little, "You never even met her."

"I am," Morse said genuinely. They sat in silence, watched the little wisps of smoke dissipate above the ashtray. "May I ask — the child?"

Of course Morse would ask. Jakes remembered when he'd been called away from the station to visit his father, remembered when he'd returned, only to take off again a few days later. Mr. Bright had received the news, called Thursday into his office to discuss it. Jakes had lingered around the doorway, perused a few odd files, tried to catch a few words. He'd known that Morse's parents had separated when he was younger — wasn't sure _where_ he'd heard it, just knew it had happened, and had felt a fleeting empathy through all his resentment. And here he was, one child of divorce asking after another. _Like attracts like,_ Jakes thought. Maybe tragically unhappy childhoods were magnets for each other. 

"We separated because of the child," Jakes said. "She passed away."

He always imagined it would sound different when he said it. He'd never said it to anyone before, not outrightly like that. He let them guess, let them come to their own conclusions because he thought he would sound weak and broken, that maybe he'd start crying. And yet none of that now; he only said the words dully, let them fall onto the table between them, where they laid, uninteresting and lethargic.

Morse's lips hung open, half-parted, startled. "I'm so sorry," he said, words stilted, like his brain needed to restart. "What — no, I'm sorry, I don't want to pry. I had no idea." He pushed his glass to the side, sat forward a little in his chair. "Why didn't you tell me?"

Jakes met his gaze, blinked in shock at the sensitivity and emotion there. "There was nothing to tell," he said honestly. "I'm not about to pay postage on a letter with one sentence in it." Morse was still staring dumbly, waiting for something more, and Jakes seized upon the opportunity to say what he wanted to say to Jacqueline earlier in the morning, to let it out and emote, finally tell someone who wasn't a piece of paper. "Go on, ask. I don't mind."

"I'm not going to make you talk about that," Morse said in disbelief. Jakes shrugged, opened his hands, held them palms up, inviting Morse to ask. "You said 'she.'"

"Her name was Angela," Jakes said. "Pneumonia, I think. I moved the year after." For a brief moment, he wished he was an Oxford academic, wished he was an artist or a poet or a writer or a philosopher, wished he knew the words to make it sound more beautiful than it was. Surely there was a Latin phrase that would suit the sentiment. 

"What about you, then?" he continued, changing the subject. Morse raised his eyebrows. "Got any women in your life?"

Morse flushed, took a drink, shook his head. "I think you already know."

"What about the guv's girl? Joan?"

He'd hit upon a nerve, Jakes could tell, seeing as Morse's face flashed with some unpinnable emotion. There was a lot to be unraveled there, then, but he didn't want to press. It was for another day. "We're friends," Morse said tightly. "I must have told you about the bank."

Jakes nodded. "She's alright, then?"

"Well, she is now. She was shaken up by it when it first happened."

"Stroke of luck that you were there. It could have been worse."

"Oh, it doesn't have to do with _luck_," Morse said dismissively.

"Just take a compliment."

"I'm not used to them, coming from you."

Jakes frowned. "Oh, come on."

"It's true."

"For the first year after you came to Cowley. Thursday was marking you. You were the hand-picked favorite, and you were a constable. Could you blame me?" Morse didn't respond, only rolled his eyes. "Anyway, I'm sorry. You know I am."

Morse's eyes flicked up. Jakes matched him. They made eye contact, held it, dared the other to look away first. This was their language, their contest. _Go on,_ they'd say to each other. _Say anything. Look away. Leave the conversation._ They played it everywhere: the station, the pub, across the room at a crime scene. Jakes had driven out to the prison the day the internal affairs hearing had opened; sat across the table from Morse, he'd been unsure of how to begin, fallen back on their old game. They'd stared at each other, waited for the other to make the first move, started to say something and then stopped.

Eventually Jakes had spoken first, and Morse had dropped his eyes. "The hearing began today," he'd said. It felt like he needed to say more, but he hadn't been able to think of anything else. Everything in his mind had been fuzzy, confusing. He'd looked again at Morse, looked at his pallor, like the color had been washed from his face, the gauntness of his cheeks. "They're doing everything to get you out."

Morse had snorted, rubbed the back of his neck. "But it's not enough, is it?" He had held onto Jakes's gaze, stared at him, hard and unforgiving. "I'm still here."

"I'm sorry," Jakes had said, at length. "I should have come with you."

Morse had shaken his head. "You couldn't have. You were — you couldn't." He'd waved his hand, circled his finger around, pointing at him. Jakes had felt the familiar shame. He'd been a coward, while Morse had rushed to Thursday's aid and was paying the noble price for it. "I expect they've called on you to testify."

Jakes had winced. The others had been called too, but it was somehow worse for him. It was the looming embarrassment of being singled out, amongst his colleagues and superiors, forced to speak about everything he'd worked so hard to put behind him. He was dreading it, the thought that Mr. Bright and Thursday and everyone, _everyone_ would know that he wasn't the person he'd cultivated so carefully. 

"Sorry," Morse had started.

"Don't," Jakes had interrupted. He'd looked around the place, indicated the bland walls and exposed brickwork. "You've obviously gotten the short end of the stick. It's wrong — you don't belong in here. You're too good for this place." He'd paused, sucked in a breath. "You're — you're too good. For any place."

"Jakes."

"No — I owe it to you. You deserve more for — for being who you are. You're good at it." Another pause. "I'm sorry — "

"Jakes, you don't need to — "

" — no — I'm sorry, please, just let me say it." The words had tumbled out. He had so much to say, didn't know how to say it. It was wrong, so wrong, so unfair. Morse was always doing the right thing, always being punished for it. He deserved so much more. Jakes had sighed, looked down at his watch, stood. "I'm sorry. You don't deserve to be here. I'm testifying tomorrow. I need to go."

Morse had reached after him, grabbed his wrist, dropped it when he'd seen the prison guard coming forward. "Peter."

Jakes had started; hearing Morse use his first name felt so foreign and jarring. "What?" 

"Come back."

They'd stared at each other. "Promise me, please," Morse had said, nearly begged. "I can't — I can't."

Jakes hadn't known what to do, had felt himself nodding, like someone was pulling at the back of his neck, yanking his head up and down. He'd gone back after that, driven out again and again, every week, sometimes twice or three times, even after pulling a few tiring shifts. It was nice, almost, to go out and see him, just the two of them. Even as Morse thinned and paled — Jakes could have sworn he caught a few gray hairs — the conversation became easier and easier. It felt like penance.

He felt like they were back at the prison now. _I'm sorry, you know I am_. Seated across from each other, surrounded by people, yet existing in a universe of only the two of them. _You know I am._

"Yeah," Morse said finally. "I know you are." He finished his drink. "I should be going. I've got to pick up Thursday tomorrow. New case."

Jakes stood. "Oh, yeah? Tell me about it."

They left the pub together, walked down the cobbled sidewalk that was so familiar to both of them. Jakes followed Morse's lead as he listened to the details of the newest case, a double-homicide out in Godstow, a missing daughter. He listened to the list of suspects they had compiled so far, to the notes De Bryn made in the postmortem, the curiousness of the child's social services file. Listening to Morse ramble and speculate felt right, felt good and nostalgic. 

Morse slowed to a stop outside a row of townhouses and rifled through his coat pocket for his keys. "This is me," he said unnecessarily, pointing up at one of the windows above them that overlooked the street. "Come upstairs — another drink."

Jakes shrugged, not so much an unsure yes as it was the absence of a no. It was a return to an unforgotten routine. He threw down the cigarette he'd been smoking on the walk back, ground it in with his heel while he waited for Morse to unlock the front door. He almost laughed at how normal it was, like he'd never left Oxford in the first place. Yes, Morse had grown a touch more attached to alcohol — and perhaps Jakes himself had, too — and a few of the streets looked distinctly different, but everything felt the same, familiar and welcoming.

He stood next to the doorway of Morse's flat, reluctant to wander in further and pollute this new space. Morse poured him another glass of whiskey and second for himself, planted himself on the other side.

"To a long-awaited reunion," Jakes toasted, downing nearly two-thirds of the drink in one go. 

"Indeed," Morse said.

"And to your new flat," Jakes added. "It's much bigger than your last." It wasn't that much bigger, really, but the windows elongated it, made it seem like the room would just go on forever. And maybe his memory was growing fuzzy, anyway.

"It is."

They stayed there, leaning against Morse's doorjamb in total silence. Jakes finished his drink and set the glass down on the bookshelf next to him, held onto the door handle for a moment. He took in Morse's face one last time for the night, looked at where his brows had drawn together more tightly, where his lips puckered and where the corners pulled down ever so slightly, where the lines around his mouth and nose had deepened from all the thinking and frowning.

"Peter," Morse said quietly, looking away, "don't."

"What?"

"Don't look at me like that."

"I wasn't." Jakes shook his head and opened the door, the moment gone. "Good night," he said. He reached into his coat pocket for another cigarette, readied it for his walk home. "Thanks for the drink. We should have another before Jackie and I leave."

Morse nodded. Jakes felt his eyes on the back of his head, watching as he went down the stairs. He stopped outside the front stoop to light the cigarette, looked up at the window, tried to discern Morse's figure amongst the silhouette of the furniture before starting off home. 

Jacqueline was seated on the bed, cross-legged, when he returned and made his way upstairs. She'd put on a record, something quiet and beautiful and restrained, was letting it spin away while she studied the score from across the room. Jakes waited outside the door for it to finish, for her to look up and see him. When it did, strings fading into near-silence, a final note plucked from a harp, he knocked gently on the doorframe.

"Peter," Jacqueline said, getting up and tiptoeing delicately across the room to pull the needle off the record, an invitation for him to come in. She hung her arms around his neck, leaned forward to kiss him. She'd had more to drink; he could smell it. "How was it? What did you talk about?"

Jakes smiled. "Alright. Work, mostly." He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "What're you listening to?"

"Mahler," she said. Of course she would be. "I found it in one of my old collections. His fifth symphony. That was the fourth movement. Isn't it the saddest and most beautiful thing you've ever heard?"

He nodded and kissed her again, and again after that. She giggled, kissed him back and fumbled with his tie, let him undo the clasp at the top of her dress, kissed him again as he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled back so she could put away the Mahler score on the floor while he kicked off his shoes. And they kissed again after that, no longer two separate people tangling together but a single being, consumed with love for itself, full of warmth and self-awareness and tenderness. And lying there next to her after she'd fallen asleep, noses nearly touching, combing through her hair with his fingers, Jakes again what he'd felt the first time they'd met: that he wanted to tell her everything, that she and Morse and Oxford and that stupid fourth movement of Mahler's fifth symphony were all the saddest and most beautiful things in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what's this.....a_nother_ update.....the sun must be rising in the west now....
> 
> i'm just trying to avoid studying for my midterms....anyway i wanted to write WAY more angst but i also want to space it out because u can only put too much angst in a fic so that's that. i'm getting over a flu so my mind is also very fuzzy and i wrote this in between job interviews and whilst taking a break between different journal articles on britain's foreign policy, so if it doesn't make sense or is full of typos/errors thats why oop...promise i'll fix those at a later date.
> 
> also if ur reading this i just want u all to know...im really bad at responding to comments bc i never know what to say but if u have commented just know that i have read it and it sits in the back of my brain and i think about it daily and it makes me very happy. thank u truly for reading :)
> 
> as always, my tumblr for those interested is [here](http://petersjakes.tumblr.com). have a good one my friends :)
> 
> EDIT: for anyone interested, [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39OFMgh6JwY) is one of my favorite recordings of mahler 5's adagietto!!


	5. four.

"Running late's not like you," Thursday said by way of greeting when he got in the car.

Morse winced as he cranked the engine. "Sorry," he said. He'd woken later than usual and spent a considerable amount of time staring at the empty space in his bed between himself and the wall. In the end he'd only gotten up when a phone call had come through from the desk at the station, and when he'd picked up he began to wish he hadn't bothered.

"Much in?"

"Came in about half an hour ago. A young girl's body has been found, in the river out by Port Meadow."

Thursday started, eyeing him through the rearview mirror. "You think it's the missing child we're looking for from the Delaneys?" 

Morse gritted his teeth. "You'd think if it wasn't, we'd have some parents ringing 999 to report a missing child."

It was an unusually pleasant day for the end of November: the sky was so beautifully clear, the few clouds in the sky were clean and pillowy, the sun bore down with a comforting brightness, even if the air was still crisp and cold enough to show breath. De Bryn was already knee-deep in the water, calling out instructions to the pair of constables lifting the body of the river. Trewlove and Strange stood on the bank, waiting. "Hello, matey," Strange said, when Morse was within earshot. "All right? Was expecting you ten minutes ago."

"Ran late. Sorry," he said, not very sorry at all. 

"Good morning, gentlemen, constable," de Bryn called, stomping his way out of the mud. "I haven't started looking closely yet, but first impressions are that this is not where it happened." The constables laid the body on a tarp on the bank; Max stepped forward again, beckoning to the rest of them. "The water will have messed with the temperature and will make an accurate time a bit difficult, but I think what is clear is that she sustained quite a severe beating before death."

"Oh, Jesus," Strange muttered, when they got close enough to see. Morse grimaced as soon as he saw it and turned away. He saw Trewlove gasp and do the same out the corner of his eye. It was too real, too terrifyingly real and raw and haunting. The girl couldn't have been older than three or four, he thought, definitely barely old enough to go to school, looked like a doll that had been discarded, her nightgown sodden and stained with brackish water, dark hair stringily plastered to her cheeks. He couldn't imagine what her last moments must have been, whoever's daughter she was. 

Thursday was the only one who managed to stand his ground. "Do you think the beating was the cause?" he asked grimly.

"Young child like this, looking at the severity of the bruises," Max trailed off, inhaled sharply. "I think it highly likely that the fatal blow is this one, delivered to the left sphenoid, but the beating may have continued postmortem." Morse could hear him humming unhappily under his breath as he took it all in. "I'd wager your killer started beating her and went on without realizing . . . ." He paused. "I must say, this really is one case that makes me quite unhappy to do my job."

"It's awful," Trewlove said, looking near tears. "How could somebody do something like that?"

Morse glanced over at her. "She's certainly the girl in the photos at the Delaney house," he said stiffly. "Whoever did this had no problems killing two people in cold blood."

"Oh, I know," Trewlove said. "But she's barely a child."

"Well, mind you find who did this," de Bryn said, straightening up behind them. "First the couple yesterday, and now this. This is shaping up to be quite sinister and unpleasant." He pulled off his gloves and frowned. "Shall we say three o'clock, gentlemen?"

When they returned to the station, Thursday beckoned him into his office with a gruff _Morse_. "Shut the door," he said, taking his hat off and setting it on the desk. "What do you think?"

"Failed kidnapping," Morse suggested, pulling out a chair and sitting down across the desk. "But that wouldn't explain the beating."

"What I can't wrap my head around is why someone would go through all the trouble of taking a child and then beat it to death," Thursday agreed. "And killing the parents in the process. Anything you're still following up on?"

"I'm hoping to find out more about the daughter today," Morse said. He paused, mulled the idea over in his brain, waited to see if he had the guts to ask what he wanted to ask. "Sir, Jakes is still in town."

Thursday frowned up at him. "What of it?"

"I thought I might ask his opinion on it. On the case. This one."

"He's no longer with the police, though, is he?"

"He is, sir, in Chicago." 

The words felt strange and foreign in Morse's mouth. It was jarring. The Peter Jakes who had returned to Oxford was not the same Peter Jakes who had left. And Morse knew it would have been naive to think otherwise, that Peter Jakes before and after moving to America would be the same, that he would develop in an entirely fluid line. But he hadn't expected that he would be so changed, for that line to be tangled and knotted and cut in places. Their drink together the night before unloaded a crushing reality upon him, what Morse knew was only half of the baggage Jakes was dragging everywhere behind him. 

The Peter Jakes who left Oxford had been happy to leave behind policing; the Peter Jakes who returned seemed to crave it in an ugly sort of way, and Morse knew it because he felt the need within himself. So many times he'd wanted to forget about it and all the misery it brought him, but he knew he couldn't leave. Police work was a string holding him together; leaving it behind would unravel him. And so he'd understood when Jakes had knocked back one drink, then another, while he struggled his way through explaining what he was doing in Chicago. 

"Blimey," Thursday said, sitting back in his chair. "I had no idea that he'd rejoined. Or that he'd moved to Chicago. When did you find this out?"

"Just last night, sir," Morse said uncomfortably. He wondered if he'd inadvertently opened a door that wasn't his to open. 

Thursday hummed. "I knew something must have happened with his girl." He leaned forward again, dug his pipe out of his pocket. "You want to bring him along?"

"He might pick up on something I miss," Morse said. It was a stupid excuse, and hardly believable, but he didn't know how else to explain his longing for their old dynamic, a car ride filled with banter and conversation, Jakes's cigarette smoke clinging to his suit. He didn't just want the work, he wanted what — no, not what, _who_ — the work brought him. "I think it's worth bringing him."

"If you say so." Thursday was filling his pipe, patting his pockets for a lighter. "Mind you don't go spilling government secrets to him. Watch yourself."

Morse nodded. He backed out of Thursday's office and all but collapsed into his own chair at his desk, breathing heavily. He felt like he needed to gasp, almost, like he'd been singing for too long without a breath, gone on without realizing that he needed air, only realizing how much he needed it when he finally did take that breath, sucking sweet air into his lungs and feeling his chest expand with the weight of everything pressing on his ribs, trying to force its way out. He wasn't sure what was hurt more within his chest, whether it was his heavy breaths or the painful pounding of his heart. He picked up the telephone but froze, holding it in midair over the cradle. He didn't have Peter's number in the city anymore, wasn't even sure where Peter was staying. Finding him would be nearly impossible. He put the phone down.

It rang almost the second it touched the cradle, nearly startling Morse out of his chair. "Hello?" he snapped, almost too harsh, pressing the phone to his cheek. 

"Well, there's no need to be like that," the voice on the other end said, scandalized.

Morse froze, incredulous. "_Peter?_"

On the other end, Jakes laughed, and Morse felt himself smile too. "I called the desk sergeant," Jakes said, still wheezing. "He was going to give you the message but I thought, why not mess him about a bit? It's like I never left."

_Never left._ Morse lowered his head. The words stung. Not because they were unkind or because Jakes was happily teasing him as always, only that they were a reminder that Jakes had left and this week of him being back in Oxford would draw to a close eventually. "Listen," Jakes was saying, his voice crackling through the receiver. "I was thinking I might drop by the station. The new station, at least. Don't know why; I saw everyone at Bright's party." He paused. "I suppose you might say that I miss it," he said, at the same time that Morse snorted wryly and said, "Don't tell me you _miss_ us."

Jakes laughed again. "It's alright if not, though," he said. "I know you've got this homicide and kidnapping case to be working through and all. It's just that Jackie's gone to meet with her old professors and teachers, and neither of us thought I'd have any use being there."

Morse sat back in his chair. "Oh," he said. "I was actually going to try to find you, to ask for your help. There's been a development. Thursday's given me the go-ahead to have you along, if you'd like."

"A return to the old days, that'd be prime," Jakes said. Morse smiled. The excitement in Jakes's voice calmed him, let him know that it was real, Jakes missed them and most of all, that Jakes missed him. It meant that nothing that mattered had changed since five years ago.

"I'm meant to see Dr. de Bryn at three o'clock," Morse said, feeling his voice warming. "Will you meet me at the hospital? I've got the car."

There was a crackling noise on the other side, and Morse could tell Peter was nodding. "I'll see you," he said, and hung up, leaving Morse sitting dumbly at his desk, phone in hand, marveling at how lucky it was that he'd called the station. 

"All right, matey?" Strange called from across the room, staring curiously at Morse. "You look funny."

Morse replaced the phone and sat back. "It's nothing," he lied. It wasn't nothing, he thought to himself, it was fucking wrong to let himself think this would amount to nothing, let alone anyone else. But at the same time he knew it was. It was nothing then. It was nothing now.

* * *

Morse was already engaged in conversation with de Bryn when Jakes finally found his way to the morgue. Though familiar, the hospital felt the slightest bit foreign to him, like it no longer recognized him as someone who lived and worked in Oxford but like it knew that he was a nomad, floating from city to city looking for something or someone to anchor him down. He stood awkwardly in the back of the theater and cleared his throat when they paused. 

"Ah, Sergeant Jakes," de Bryn said, raising his eyebrows in greeting. "Nice to see you. It's been quite a while."

Jakes grinned. He'd even missed de Bryn. "Not a sergeant anymore, unfortunately," he said.

"Morse was just telling me you're still with the police in America."

"I'm only a detective," he said. "And I'm only here to drag Morse back down to Earth when he starts on another outlandish theory."

"I fear I might only make your job more difficult," de Bryn said, sighing. "It's for you to decide."

Jakes nodded, but he wasn't listening, distracted instead with the tiny child on the steel table in front of them. She looked young, barely three years old, skin and hair still grimy looking even though she'd been cleaned. He was transfixed, sickeningly fascinated with the peaceful expression on her face, eyes closed and lips barely parted — if he hadn't seen the dark purple bruise across her temple, he would have thought she was asleep. In his nearly ten years working for the police, he'd never seen a girl of this age on the autopsy table. 

He had asked for an autopsy for Angela. It had been just before dawn — the hospital clock had indicated just past five — when he'd woken to the sound of Hope screaming and a nurse asking for them to leave the room. "What's happening?" he had asked dumbly, still groggy. He'd spent so long slumped in the chair next to Angela, asleep, that his back cracked when he stood.

"Peter," Hope had sobbed, grabbing at his sweater. He had shuffled out of the room, Hope so devastated that he thought he was nearly carrying her, letting a nurse all but push them into the hallway. "She's not breathing. She's not — "

He had collapsed into another chair outside, holding Hope. She had been crying so hard it seemed like her body was practically draining through her tears; she was shriveling up and curling into his body. He had lifted his hand to her head, pulled his fingers through her hair slowly and shushed her, rigid with shock. It wasn't possible, it couldn't be. Only infants died of pneumonia, didn't they? "She's not breathing," Hope was still whispering, tears seeping through his sweater. Their doctor had emerged and taken the seat next to them, his words drowned by Hope's cries. Jakes had tried to cry, only to find that he couldn't. He'd left Hope shaking weakly in his chair and chased after the doctor. 

"I'm sorry," he'd said. "I don't understand what went wrong."

"Mr. Jakes, I'm truly sorry for you and your wife's loss, but your daughter remained unresponsive to attempts to revive — "

"You said she was getting better," Jakes had said desperately. "You said that it would only be a day or two before she could come home — you said — "

The doctor had held up his hand to silence Jakes. "Pneumonia in young children can be unpredictable," he'd begun.

"I want an autopsy," Jakes had interrupted. "How do I request an autopsy?"

The doctor had stared back at him, dumfounded. "You want to request an autopsy for your daughter," he'd repeated. Jakes had nodded; the doctor had sighed and taken him to a nurse at reception to file paperwork. It hadn't mattered in the end: the doctor had been correct. The report had used the words _infection spread_ and _bilateral pneumonia_ and _complications_ and at the very end, had concluded that Angela had not died from malpractice or negligence or anything besides a unusually vicious infection of her lungs. Hope had been furious when the phone call from the chief medical examiner had come, saying that the autopsy had been completed. She'd screamed, incredulous — _why would you ask for an autopsy?_ — not spoken to him for a day afterwards and refused to go with him to the hospital to receive the results.

It had been the first time Jakes had been to a morgue since moving. When the medical examiner had come through the theater doors, Jakes had instinctively gone towards him, involuntarily letting out an uncomfortable laugh when he realized he wouldn't be allowed in. "I used to be a police sergeant," he'd said, trying to explain before the examiner could ask.

The medical examiner had softened. "Force of habit, I'm sure," he'd said. "I understand." He'd held his notes up to the light, glancing at them over the rim of his glasses. "Mr. and Mrs. Jakes, correct? Is your wife on her way?"

Jakes had shaken his head, then pointed at the doors awkwardly. "Could I see her?"

The examiner had opened his mouth — a _no,_ Jakes had assumed — but then closed it. "Come in," he said quietly, backing up and holding a door open for Jakes.

Three of the steel tables were occupied, draped with white sheets. Jakes could spot the one he'd come for, the lump under the sheet half the size of the other two. The medical examiner had glanced at him for the go-ahead before pulling back the cover, stood back and folded his hands together. 

It was the only other time Jakes had seen a child on the autopsy table. He'd hoped, then, that it would be the last. _That's my daughter,_ he'd thought, looking at the girl there, peaceful and asleep. Now, standing with Morse opposite Dr. de Bryn, he almost said the same thing. _That's my daughter,_ he wanted to say, staring at the girl's face, with her closed eyes and silent mouth and dark brown hair pooling on the table beneath her head, lying there altogether undisturbed. His nose itched with tears that he suddenly wanted to shed. _That's my daughter right there._

* * *

**february, 1972**

When Jacqueline awoke, she stiffened at her unfamiliar surroundings at first, feeling the nearly-forgotten weight of another person next to her in bed. Peter's breath tickled the base of her neck; his nose barely brushed up against the tiny ridge of her spine beneath her skin, face nestled up against her body. She extracted her arm out from under herself and rolled onto her back as gently as possible, tried to read her watch in the bluish darkness. _Quarter past two, maybe,_ she thought, squinting at the hands, vision fuzzy. Or maybe ten past three. 

She exhaled slowly and turned her head, resting her cheek against Peter's hair, softened up from tossing and turning against the pillow. _Too much hair gel,_ she mused with a dry smile, sniffing the residue that came off in her fingers. She tried to recall the dream she'd awoken from, grabbing at bits and pieces of it as it faded, sat up slowly.

Peter's apartment was smaller than her own but still bigger than the old flat she'd occupied in Oxford; the moonlight made its way through the open living room windows, casting shadows on the ground that Jacqueline could see even from the bed. She kicked her legs over the side of the bed, trying not to disturb the covers, and sat for a moment, listening to the rain and watching the moving light on the ground. She stood up, shivered in the cold and wet air, made her way to the living room, stopping to pick up her blouse from the floor at the foot of the bed where they'd discarded it earlier that night; stared at it for a moment, like it was someone else's, let the slinky material roll back and forth between her hands.

She ended up in front of the living room windows, staring at the tiny puddle of rainwater that had started accumulating just over the threshold. Peter had left them cracked open an inch, saying it got too hot otherwise. _Fuck,_ Jacqueline thought, staring out at the street below. A gust of wind pushed at her open blouse and she crossed her arms over her stomach, trying to pin it down. What did she think she was doing, spending the night with Peter? She wracked her memory, unable to decide if the _I love you_ from the bar bouncing around her brain was real or some alcoholic dream. _You said_ I love you _back,_ she continued, rubbing her fingers up and down the skin on her waist absently. Her neck burned. They'd kissed. Again. Not just a kiss outside the bar before going home, they'd gone home and continued the kiss. She brought a hand up to her throat, touched the join between her jaw and her neck, felt the bruise forming there. That much felt clear. 

Jacqueline moved her fingers over the appendectomy scar above her hip and frowned. She couldn't remember the last time she'd spent the night with someone, began to wish she hadn't. It left her exposed, vulnerable, only a few steps from overflowing and telling him everything about herself. She couldn't tell Peter everything, couldn't tell him _anything,_ couldn't give that kind of power to him, no matter how good he seemed, she decided. He could love her without knowing.

He tapped her on the shoulder, startling her out of her reverie. He'd been in her dream, hadn't he? she wondered suddenly, clenching her fist around the fabric of her shirt, now bunched up between her fingers. She turned to look at him. "Peter," she whispered, staring. There was so much she owed him in explanations that she hoped she'd never have to give. "Did I wake you?"

Peter didn't answer, only shook out the bedsheet in his hands and draped it over her shoulders, pulling the edges together and tucking them into her folded arms. She freed a hand again to hold onto the twisted knot of the sheets and let him guide her back to his bed, hand on the small of her back. They got back into bed together; she let him pull her into him, resting her face against his chest and feeling the weight of his heart pounding from within. _Ask me,_ Jacqueline thought, blinking out a tear. _When are you going to ask? When is this going to end?_ But he said nothing, and the hand around her shoulder slowly slipped away and fell with a soft _thump_ to the mattress.

It occurred to her that perhaps he knew not to ask any questions about her, that perhaps they both knew it was for the best if neither of them had a chance to expose their ugliness. She had felt his secrets, tiny, nearly non-existent ridges along the backs of his thighs and where his back arched. They'd been barely visible in the dim light; she'd only seen them when she put her face close to them. They were almost gone, old scars, then, nearly healed. _Pain, torture, abuse_ — the words had flashed in her mind, grotesque and unwelcome. Anything that stuck around on your skin for that long wasn't a simple school punishment, she'd thought, the cogwheels turning in her brain even as he was undoing her bra and pressing her lips to the bare skin it left behind again and again. He'd come back up to kiss her and traced her lips with his fingers, letting them dip into her mouth, and she'd felt almost sick for a moment as the possibilities flitted through her mind. Was that why she was drawn to him? Was that all there was to it, that they were just two people running from traumatic pasts who happened to find themselves in a bar in Chicago? Those scars, and the way his voice shook when he whispered _I love you_ in her ear like he was a little afraid, and the way she thought he was blinking away tears when he looked at her, they all said so many things to her that struggled to make sense of it. She wondered if he could read her body in the same way, if hers was also a map of the lowest points in her life. And if he'd read it — the patch of white scars on her back from when she'd scratched at her eczema rash so hard that it had bled and scabbed over, the shiver when he put his hands on the bare skin of her waist and hips, the tightened skin on the back of her left shoulder from a burn she'd gotten back in Oxford — she owed him her life for not asking either. 

"Peter," she whispered. He was asleep, Jacqueline was sure, but her throat was tightening and she wanted to tell him she owed him everything, mostly a _thank you,_ for buying her a drink six weeks ago and for saying _I love you_ and for kissing her like nothing about her that he didn't already know didn't matter. 

He lifted his hand to touch her hair. She was surprised. "What?" he croaked softly, eyes still closed.

Jacqueline fought to swallow against the painful lump in her throat, the walls closing in on her. "It's nothing," she choked out finally, when she could breathe again.

Peter hummed. "Go to sleep," he said.

She nodded and turned her head up towards him to press the tiniest kiss to the bottom of his chin. _Thank you,_ she said to him silently. _Thank you for buying me a drink and for saying_ I love you _and for kissing me like my past doesn't matter. I love you, too, just the same._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so after 2+ months and god knows how many attempts to get past this block i had after this one (1) line i sat down today and wrote and ??? here we are. having very mixed feelings about this fic now that it's like five months after i originally started writing it but i already wrote my new year's resolutions for 2020 and one of them was that i would finish this fic so help me god so _hello everybody_ suffer through this w me will you?? this chapter was way more edgy than i was planning but i'm glad it's done lmao i'm beginning to remember that writing fic is like uni in that ur like "i just have to get past this" but when u get past This it's just More This lmao but like i said im really hoping to commit to something in 2020 and this is one of those things! so i will continue on my bullshit lol
> 
> also not to be dramatic or anything but i would literally kill for a soft peter jakes bed scene i don't care if it's hope or jacqueline or morse @russell lewis please give it to me!!!!
> 
> anyway as uszzhh my tumblr is [here](http://petersjakes.tumblr.com). i love u all! -i


	6. five.

**november, 1972**

The house windows were dark when they pulled up to the curb outside the house.

"Is — is she not home?" 

Jakes followed Morse's line of vision, ducking his head to look out at the window at the shadowy garden. He glanced at his watch in the dim interior lighting of the car. "Probably asleep by now," he said. "She didn't sleep well last night." He looked back at Morse. "Come in for a drink?"

Morse smiled thinly and shook his head. "Didn't sleep last night either." He cranked the engine. "Come in tomorrow?"

"I'll be there in the afternoon, I should think," Jakes said, stepping out of the car and shutting the door behind him. He stooped down to the window. "Have the desk sergeant call the house, will you? 'Night." He made his way to the front door carefully, squinting his eyes to see in the faint glow of the car headlights on the street and fumbling with the key in the lock. Jacqueline had given him the spare earlier that morning, rummaging through a drawer in the foyer to find it, casting aside a number of postcards and photos to find it. He'd snuck a glance at them — photos from some holiday at least a decade ago. A few piqued his interest; he'd taken a moment to identify the three characters in each — a tall, distinguished looking gentleman that was presumably the famed Stephen Hallward, standing behind two women who looked nearly identical in the grainy sepia of the photos, the only distinction between them being the vibrant mid-laugh smile on one side and the polite, toothless one on the other. He'd dropped the photos and shut the drawer, feigning indifference, when Jacqueline found the spare key on the keyring and handed it to him.

"Peter," Jacqueline's voice said, emerging from the hallway. "It's late."

Jakes whipped around. She was in her nightdress, standing barefoot by the staircase, hair loose around her shoulders as if in a fairy tale. "I didn't think you'd still be up. It's late," he echoed.

"I was waiting for you." 

He sighed and reached out for her hand, leading the way upstairs. "Morse was asking for my thoughts on a case," he said. He turned on the bedroom light. "I was helping him with inquiries."

Jacqueline stood by the bureau, picking up her jewelry and playing with it absently in one hand as she watched him undress — pulling at his tie, undoing the top button. They played this sort of game all the time, watching each other, gauging whether or not they wanted to be stupid and foolish and lose themselves, becoming fluent in each other's body language. "Like you never left," she said, dropping her chain back on the dresser. 

Peter sank into the armchair across the room and tugged his tie the rest of the way off, dropping it at his feet. Jacqueline wrinkled her nose; she never said anything when they left their clothes on the floor and she did it quite often as well, but he knew she didn't like seeing the mess. He'd deal with it tomorrow morning, he decided, hoping she could read it somewhere in his face, see the tragedy of this beaten up little girl and her dead parents and see that he didn't want to think about anything anymore. "I'm tired," he said, ending the conversation before it could even begin.

They lay together on their backs in the dark, Jacqueline's head pressing lightly against his shoulder. Peter pulled the covers up further and tucked them around her shoulders. She always got cold at night; she'd burrow closer and closer to him for warmth and then wake up shivering. "Do you ever think about moving back?" she said suddenly, voice artificially light.

Peter opened his mouth, the answer on the tip of his tongue, _no_, but the air caught in his throat. He'd thought about it especially frequently after losing Angela. She was, after all, the reason why he'd moved out to Cheyenne in the first place. It had been such an idyllic picture of the future. He and Hope would raise a beautiful, perfect daughter, and they'd live a beautiful, perfect life, in this beautiful, perfect American landscape. It wasn't far off from what adventurers and explorers had gone off to pursue in those stories he'd read as a child. The air would be so fresh it would sting to inhale, and they'd get to live through sunset after gorgeously surreal sunset, and he'd get to spend dry and hot and sunny summer afternoons spraying Hope and Angela with a hose. And then the seasonal flu had happened, and Angela had caught it, and it hadn't gone away, and all of a sudden the cinematic future he'd planned had dissolved into silent, wakeful nights and an empty bedroom and him and Hope being unable to even look at each other without her crying and him coming dangerously close. 

Then _that conversation_ had happened, after nearly a year of torturously avoiding anything that could make either of them think of what they'd lost. It was Sunday morning, and Hope's mother had just left for church when Hope's father stood from the kitchen table and announced that it was unseasonally dry, and as a result he thought he should feed the cattle. Peter had stood and offered to help, but the old man had waved at him and told him to sit down before disappearing out the kitchen door, leaving Peter and Hope in anguished silence. 

Hope had looked at him sadly over the rim of her bowl of cereal and sighed. "We can't keep going on like this," she'd said finally, sounding almost exasperated. "We have to think about what's next."

Peter had agreed, though he'd secretly wondered why she was only just starting to say this after eleven months. A movement under the table had caught his eye, and his heart had sunk at the sight of Hope's fingers twisting her ring back and forth, moving it up and down her finger. "If you're about to say what I think you're about to say," he'd murmured, putting his head in his hands, "don't."

"What? What do you think I'm about to say?" Hope had snapped. Peter hadn't responded, only looked down at her hands, nervously fidgeting behind the cereal bowl. She'd stopped. "Peter . . . ."

"Don't," he'd repeated. "The answer's no."

"We need to at least talk about it," she'd said, practically begging. "I can't even look at you without thinking about her. And you feel the same, I know you do. We barely spend any time together anymore. We don't even speak to each other any more because of her."

He'd shaken his head. "We just need more time."

"We've had nearly a year," she'd said, and Peter had found himself struggling to remain expressionless, knowing she was right.

"We can try again," he said desperately. "We'll get it right this time, we'll — "

"_Try again?_" Hope had repeated, and Peter knew how ridiculous that sounded. "What the hell do you think this is? We are not just going to replace her. We can't do that, and you know it."

He did. So he said what he'd been thinking about for the last ten months.

"Maybe we should go back."

"No," Hope had said, immediately, so quickly it was clear that she hadn't even given it thought, and that was how Peter had known he had a chance. 

It was this absence of hesitation that, in the end, made Peter stop before he answered Jacqueline. He could hear the firmness, the determination in Hope's voice, ringing in his ears. Determination like that only existed if you were trying to convince yourself otherwise.

"All the time," Peter said finally, truthfully lifting his hand to stroke Jacqueline's hair. 

She turned her face closer into his body, sighing. Her breath tickled his skin. "Me too," she admitted. "I miss it here."

There was a _but_ at the end of that sentence. Peter would've missed it if he hadn't felt the same. _I miss it_, he thought, _but_. But _there's a reason I left in the first place_. So many buts, so many choices with which to finish the sentence. But it didn't matter anyway. By the time he'd cleared his throat and blinked enough to speak clearly, Jacqueline was already asleep.

* * *

The phone call came early in the morning, pulling Peter from his groggy half-sleep. The space in the bed next to him was empty, but he could hear the muffled sounds of Jacqueline playing records downstairs with the windows open, the music floating up through the garden. He staggered across the room and picked up mid-ring, the shrill tone still reverberating in the air, rattling around in his sleep-addled mind. "Who's this?"

"It's Morse."

"Christ, Morse," Peter mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "What time do you call this?"

"It's half-past eight Peter," said Morse, exasperated. "Please don't be like this."

Peter reached across the dresser for his watch and squinted at it. "Oh."

"I thought you would already be awake."

"Doesn't matter any more. What's this about?"

"I put in an inquiry with the Home Office, to ask about the girl who was born in the United States, the Delaneys', Alice. I mentioned to you last night that Joan Thursday told me she was an American citizen by birth."

Peter nodded, picking up the cradle and depositing it on the armchair in the corner of the room so he could get dressed. "And?"

"She's registered as a British national. I assumed it was because she was adopted, but the full file came through to the station last night. She was offered a dual citizenship when she came into the country. She's British by her mother."

"What, so," Peter cleared his throat and held the receiver with his shoulder, trying to do his tie in the mirror, "so you're saying Joan Thursday's suggestion was right? Someone went to America, had a baby, came back, rejected her daughter's American citizenship, got her name withheld from all the files, and gave the child to social services? You're saying this child's some — some _high_ level government official or someone's kiddie?" 

"I'm not saying it's for certain," Morse said carefully, "I'm only saying everything's pointing to the mother having connections — friends in high places. You know what I mean. There's no birth name registered to Alice Delaney. I'm sure those connections have something to do with everything, with Mr. and Mrs. Delaney, the child's kidnapping, her death. Extortion, perhaps."

Peter sighed. "I don't think I've missed your wild theorizing, Morse."

"Samuel Delaney used to work in government, for the Foreign Office," Morse said. "He must have had a colleague, a contact, _someone_, who helped get him and his wife their daughter. I'm certain, Alice Delaney is at the center of all of this. I've been working through a list of his old colleagues at the Foreign Office who are still alive, in Oxford. I phoned to see if you wanted to come with me to ask some questions."

"I'll be dressed in a few, if —"

"I'll come by."

Peter heard the _click_ of the line dying and rolled his eyes. Morse never could control himself once he got onto a theory.

He made his way to the study downstairs, where he could faintly recognize the melodies of _Turandot_ once again. He could hear Jacqueline rustling around in the back corner, hidden from view by a pile of books strewn haphazardly next to the desk. 

"Isn't it a bit early for Puccini?" he said, leaning against the doorframe.

Jacqueline leapt up, upsetting the stack of books. "Shit," she muttered, reaching out to steady them and tiptoeing around the binders on the floor. "I was just having a look through some of my old revision notes, from my exams, from when I was up. And — ," here she gestured vaguely at the mess, " — you know, organizing some of my old music and records. I didn't know I'd left so much here." She lifted the needle, cutting off Calaf mid-phrase, catapulting them into silence. "You're dressed already? It's barely — "

"Nearly quarter 'til nine," Peter finished, holding up his wrist so she could see his watch. "I know, Morse had to tell me like I was absolutely stupid."

"Oh," Jacqueline said, looking over her shoulder at the open windows, as if confused about where the sunlight was coming from. Peter wondered when she'd woken up, if she still thought it was early. She reached up, touched Peter's tie uncertainly. "Are you going, then?"

"Morse has asked me to go with him, check out some of this Mr. Delaney's connections." Peter brushed Jacqueline's hair away from her face, watching the way her eyes drifted, avoiding eye contact. "He's coming by."

Jacqueline stepped away, crossing the room to close the windows, and paused, arms outstretched, pulling down on the handles, face turned upward towards the greyish sky. Peter had the odd sensation for the first time in a while that he couldn't read her at all. Not in the mysterious, enthralling, _je ne sais quoi_ sort of way, but in the shielded, self-absorbed sort of way, the _I don't want to talk about it_ sort of way. It felt strange and foreign not to feel anything that she was feeling; even when she bottled everything up he could sense it rolling off her in waves, the anger and the melancholy and the bitterness. But now it was like standing in the dead spot in the concert hall, insulated by silence. 

"I don't have to go," Peter said finally.

Jacqueline's hands dropped to the sill and she sighed, reaching up again to pull the windows shut. "It looks like it might rain," she said, turning around and perching on the ledge for a moment. She was still in her nightgown, the fabric swaying and settling between her knees. Peter stared at her hands, twisting together in her lap, trying to figure out if it was irritation or anger or anxiety keeping her on the edge. But before he could decide, they disentangled themselves and dropped to her sides. She stood. "I'll get you an umbrella."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my GOD hi friends it's been a hot second!! last time i updated this was december 2019 which is insane to me? i went through a weird emo phase in like february-march where i was like _fuck this fic, i don't even remember where i was going with it when i started it, i'm deleting it!!_ but i did put it in my new years resolutions and 2020 bucket list that i would finish it so even if i hate it by the end... there will be an ending. (and i know how i want it to end at least lol but also cant decide if i want it to be happy or angsty sad. thoughts?)
> 
> anyway a lot has happened as i am sure everyone knows and i really felt like if i was gonna be stuck in my house i should at least try to write something so here it is, 4 months later, an update (albeit a very short one). was going to make it longer but i'm working on two (well, one, really, bc i'm blocked on the other) fics, which i've been doing for a really long time (oops), and also the material i wanted to put in this chapter didn't really fit the same vibe, so i moved it to the next chapter. so that's how chaotic my brain's been but i only have a week left of classes and then a week of final exams and then i have pretty much the entire summer to write, guilt-free.
> 
> dont know where this authors note is going bc i feel like i had a lot of thoughts in my head? which is why i started writing again i think. so anyway i hope everyone's well and staying safe and my thoughts and heart are with all of you. thank u for reading and sticking with me and my crazy disorganized chaotic brain. love u!! -iv


	7. six.

**march, 1964**

"Dr. Brantley. Could I borrow Jacqueline Hallward for a moment?"

Jacqueline glanced up, eyes bouncing back and forth between her professor and the dean, whose profile was barely visible peeking through the crack and the door. "We're just in the middle of a tutorial," Dr. Brantley was saying quietly, pointing over his shoulder at her. 

"It's a bit of an urgent matter."

"We'll be finished in a few moments." 

The dean was silent. Jacqueline tried to catch his reaction, but he only nodded, and his shadow retreated. Dr. Brantley closed his office door and turned back to her, marked-up score and paper in hand. Jacqueline eyed it suspiciously, trying to gauge how much blue ink was on it. "As I was saying before we were interrupted, the analysis you've marked in the music itself is well-done, but the paper is lacking. Again, the written analysis is actually quite good, but you're missing a lot of historical information. We haven't time to go over all of it," he said briskly, handing the paper back to her, "but take a look at my notes and try to have a revision in to me by the end of the week."

Jacqueline flipped through the pages, frowning when she saw Dr. Brantley's slanted handwriting dotting the margins. One page had received a particularly brutal evaluation, she noted, frowning and tilting her head slightly to read one of the notes. _Excellent harmonic analysis,_ it said, and she hid a tiny smile — she knew some of her classmates would scream if they knew just how well she was doing with the analyses they were being assigned — but the brief flash of excited satisfaction was gone, replaced instead with slight irritation when she read, _but what is the SIGNIFICANCE of all this??_. She shuffled everything back together and stood. "Will you be in on Friday?" 

"Only for a bit," Dr. Brantley said. "Leave your paper under the door and I'll collect it in the evening." He held his arm out, gesturing to his office door. "You'd better go. Dr. Chard is outside; he asked to speak with you. I told him I wouldn't keep him waiting. I'll see you at the recital tomorrow night, I should hope. Brahms deserves your presence, and Professor Keyes especially is a wonderful cellist to hear."

Jacqueline nodded, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She was always pleased when Dr. Brantley invited her to his faculty recitals. It was the closest he came to picking favorites, since no one could ever tell if his blue-inked criticism was a good or a bad sign. "I've been looking forward to it," she said.

He opened the door for her. "Good."

Dr. Chard, the Dean of Students, was waiting outside, hands folded neatly in front of him. A stranger stood just behind him, hands in his pockets. "Miss Hallward," the dean said by way of greeting, stopping Jacqueline in her path. "If I might have a moment."

Jacqueline shot a sideways glance at the stranger. "What is it?"

"This is Detective Constable Jakes, from the police," Dr. Chard said slowly, giving her an odd look. "He has some — ah, news. For you."

Jacqueline frowned. Dr. Chard seemed so uncertain that for a moment she wondered if something had happened, if something had happened to someone. She ran through the list in her head. Maybe something had happened to her apartment, or the girl in the flat across from hers. But that girl wasn't a student; the dean would only be here if it was a student. Perhaps one of her classmates. "Is everything alright?" she asked suddenly, still thinking about the possibilities. Maybe it was Christopher, maybe he'd gotten hurt, for real this time. He was always showing up to class and tutorials late, citing bicycle accidents that everyone knew were false. 

Dr. Chard exchanged glances with the constable — what was it, Jakes? — who shook his head tightly. "We'll be alright from here," the constable said. "Thank you."

"Of course," said Dr. Chard, still looking very uncomfortable, before turning on his heel and hurrying off. 

Jacqueline watched as he left, still puzzling over which of her classmates had gotten themselves in trouble. Julie was always shoplifting, never anything big, just the odd few things here and there. It couldn't be her. She wasn't stupid enough to steal anything that the police would be interested in. Christopher, it had to be. "I hope he's alright," she said out loud.

"Dr. Chard?" Jakes said, startled. 

"Christopher," Jacqueline said. "That's what this is about, isn't it? He's gotten himself into a bicycle accident for real this time."

Jakes stared at her, dumbfounded. It wasn't Christopher, then. He placed a hand on the small of her back, a gentle guide. "Is there somewhere nearby where we can sit for a moment?"

Jacqueline nodded slowly, folding her arms as she led the way down the steps, out to the courtyard. The constable planted himself in front of a bench and held his hand out, gesturing for her to sit. "It's Miss Hallward, isn't it?" She nodded again, squinting up at him. The sun was unbearably bright for so early in the season. "Your mother's been involved in a motor accident."

Jacqueline flushed, her face unbearably hot. She pulled her bag off her shoulder and set it next to her slowly, folding her coat on top, tugged a little at her collar. She could feel sweat beading at the base of her neck, her back suddenly too warm, even in the fresh, cold breeze. "Is she alright?" she breathed, touching a hand to her hair as if she was afraid it might not be real. She knew the answer already, dread settling in the pit of her stomach, her arms laden with some invisible weight. "My mother, is she — ?"

Jakes stayed standing, gazing down at her, hands still in his coat pockets. Jacqueline stared up at him, his face stiff and unreadable, already an answer in itself. "Oh," she said. "Okay." She looked down at her hands, then back up. "Did they call you? Did the person who — ?"

"We're working on it," Jakes said, letting her put together the rest of the pieces. He waited for a response; seeing none, he sighed and reached into his breast pocket, produced a pack of cigarettes and offered them to her, a little row of consolation prizes for her to choose from. She shook her head. He shrugged a little as if to say _fair enough_ and took one for himself, held it with his lips while he lit it, shielding it from the wind. He pointed at the empty space next to her. "May I?"

Jacqueline nodded again. She reached up to touch the back of her neck, fingers numb, self-conscious of how much she was nodding, wondering if it was normal to keep nodding like this. "Does my father know? He's not in Oxfordshire right now — " 

"We've telephoned his office in London," Jakes said, taking a long drag on his cigarette. Jacqueline could feel him watching, faintly aware of his eyes fixed on her, too distracted to care. "I believe his secretary took the call."

"She has a very high-pitched voice," Jacqueline remarked distantly. 

"I didn't make the call myself."

"I know," Jacqueline said automatically. She hadn't known. "I was just — just saying." They sat in silence for a while, and then she stood quickly, still staring blindly into space. Jakes reached for her things and sat forward, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. "Do I — do I need to identify her body, or something? That's what they — that's what the police do, isn't it?"

"You don't have to. Not right now, at least. We can wait for your father."

"Okay," said Jacqueline. "I need to get home. My — my father will be trying to reach me." And she started off, folding her arms again. It was suddenly very cold; she found herself shivering even in the sun. 

"Miss Hallward," the constable called, jogging a little to catch up. Jacqueline kept going, fixated on the thought of returning home and waiting by the phone for her father to call. She tried to remember the last time she had spoken to him — it must have been over the phone a few weeks ago, she thought, just five minutes to say hello, or else it must have been when they had dinner together on New Year's. She tried to imagine how they'd greet each other if he called now. She turned around to face the constable. "You left your things," he said.

"Oh," Jacqueline said dumbly. "Sorry." She watched as he tossed his half-smoked cigarette to the paved cobblestone and ground it out with his heel.

"I'll see you home," Jakes said, readjusting her bag on one arm while he shook out her coat and held it up for her. She mumbled a half-hearted _thanks_ and shrugged her way into it. "You don't have to," she said softly, at the same time Jakes continued, "You're not thinking straight."

Jacqueline held her hand out for her bag, but the constable waved her off and gestured for her to lead the way. "Okay," she said. She frowned. She felt like an idiot, all these stupidly inarticulate _okay_s and _oh_s, the kinds of replies for which she'd get a scornful glance from Dr. Brantley. "It's not far." Not that it mattered. "Are you sure about carrying my bag? It's — I've got — I've got a lot of things in it at the moment."

He looked at her like she really was an idiot, as if to say _just let me carry your damn bag_. She nodded yet again and started off for her flat, hardly daring to look back as they made their way down the street. Jakes could have ducked away and left and she wouldn't have noticed as she continued on, crossing the street without even glancing at him over her shoulder. Only when they were just across the street from her house did she pause to look at him. "I suppose I should be more careful around these," she mused, "crossing the street, you know. Otherwise I might end up like my mother."

"I think motorists should be a bit more careful," Jakes said.

"Hm," said Jacqueline, stepping into the street. They stopped at the corner, just in front of a narrow little building in a row that Jakes recognized as popular housing, frequented mostly by the students around the city. She tugged on the strap of her bag wordlessly, pulling it off his shoulder and holding it against her stomach as she rummaged through the side pocket. "Sorry," she said to no one in particular. "My keys."

"Do you have a roommate?" Jakes asked, holding the door and following her up the stairs. "Or someone who can stay with you?"

Jacqueline shook her head and flipped through the keys on her keyring. The door jammed and she sighed heavily, embarrassed that someone should have to see her struggling to open a door. "There's the girl who lives in the flat across the landing," she said, jerking her head in the opposite direction. "But we're not terribly close." The door jammed again and she pounded a fist against the door. "Fuck!"

Jakes held his hand out for the keys. "You forgot the deadbolt," he said simply, unlocking the door for her.

"I'm sorry," Jacqueline said again. "I'm being stupid." She tossed her coat over the armchair in the corner of her living room and emptied the contents of her bag on the floor next to the sofa, suddenly overwhelmed with the desire to pore over Dr. Brantley's notes. The thought of it was so appealing, of putting on a record and curling up against the sofa and making notes on notes, scribbling over scribbles, doing nothing else, hypnotizing herself with work, just thinking and being mindless all at the same time. 

Jakes closed the door gently. "We can send someone, if you'd like," he said, standing with his hands back in his pockets. "A WPC, just until your father returns."

"I'll be alright," she murmured, gazing absently at the telephone. She looked away, then thought better of it and moved it down onto the rug, next to her papers. "Thank you for taking me home."

"Of course," Jakes said. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a card, sliding it onto the doorside table. "That's me and the station, if you need anything," he added, tapping the card. 

"Yes," Jacqueline said, her voice sounding more like an echo in the stifling silence of the flat. She tried to think of a record she could put on to fill the space. "Yes."

"I'll show myself out."

"Thank you for — for walking me home," Jacqueline repeated. "I know I said it already, but . . . thank you." She sank to the floor, toying with the fringe on the rug, then sat forward on her knees. "Will you call if you find the driver?"

"We'll give you a call."

"Okay," said Jacqueline. She sat back again, falling against the sofa. "Okay."

Jakes opened the door to leave, then turned back, hovering in the doorway until Jacqueline looked up at him. "I'm terribly sorry, Miss Hallward," he said softly, pulling the door shut behind him.

She could hear as he made his way back down the stairs, the sound of the front door opening and closing, and for a moment she wanted to run after him and ask him to stay with her until her father called. The shock kept gnawing at her, scrabbling at the edges of her thoughts; she wanted to seal it out, beat back the inevitable onset of loneliness that she knew the eventual grief, when it finally came with all its ugly force, would bring. She hadn't been able to bring herself to look at the constable again on the walk home, to focus on his face as he held her coat out to her, too afraid of that measured, stony gaze he'd had earlier. But the last sentence he'd said — _I'm terribly sorry, Miss Hallward_, with that immeasurable weight and awkwardly proffered sympathy — had shaken her to her core, slapped her in the face when he'd stared into her eyes. There was a new language that came with loss, unspoken understanding and shared mourning. She wondered who he had lost, how he'd learned to speak the language. She wanted him to come back and stand in the doorway, watch over her until her father returned, hold the box of cigarettes out, waiting for her to take one. It was too lonely otherwise. Someone needed to help her carry the weight of it all.

* * *

**may, 1972**

The first time she invited Peter back to her apartment, Jacqueline made him stand outside her door for five minutes.

"I'm not going to turn you in if I find anything illegal," he said jokingly. "I think we both know I'm far from perfect."

Jacqueline giggled. She mentally slapped herself for sounding so stupid. She needed to lay off the drinks a bit, she thought, her tolerance was dipping even lower. The alcohol was making her sound like a teenager, and besides, just because she no longer had to go to classes in the morning didn't mean it was a free pass to get blitzed every night. "Just give me a few minutes," she begged, digging through her purse for her keys. "My flat's a mess right now. I just need to tidy some things."

Peter smiled at her, leaning against the wall. "Come here," he said, reaching for her arm. 

"What — I'm looking for my keys!" she cried as Peter pulled her closer and kissed her forehead.

"I just really love you," he said softly.

Jacqueline felt her face flush and turned away quickly. "If you really love me," she said, grinning when she finally found her keys and dangling them from her fingers victoriously, "give me five minutes to clean up before you knock?"

Peter laughed. "Okay." He held up his watch. "I'm timing you."

"Trying to open my door doesn't count as part of my time," Jacqueline protested, jiggling the doorknob when the door refused to open. The mirror image in her mind, of a twenty-one-year old version of herself struggling to open a door in front of the constable in her building in Oxford, bubbled to the surface of her memory. She pulled the key out and tried again. "I'm too drunk," she muttered, mostly to herself.

"You didn't do the deadbolt." Peter held out his hand, waiting for the keys. "Here."

_You forgot the deadbolt_, the other Peter said in her head. 

Jacqueline slumped against the door, one hand still on the knob. The embarrassment of forgetting the simplest things, of being unable to do the smallest things properly, the frustration of being stupid in front of this man who was just waiting politely for her cue to enter, waiting, waiting, waiting by her side, waiting just behind her, consumed her entirely. She thought about Other Peter and how he'd opened the door for her, how he'd looked over his shoulder at her and turned around just as he left, how he'd spoken that new language to her, offered to help carry the burden. Her eyes welling up with tears and buried her face in her hands. "I'm so sorry," she said, trying to convince Peter — no, forget about Peter, she was convincing herself — that she wasn't crying. "This is so stupid."

She peered out between her fingers. Peter was lowering his hand hesitantly, palm still outstretched, still offering to open the door for her, though his face registered confusion and concern. "I won't look," he said helplessly. "Not until you say it's alright for me to look."

Jacqueline snorted and wiped her eyes, brushed her hair out of her face. She blinked, hard. "Sorry," she repeated, and dropped the keys into Peter's waiting hand. "I don't — that was stupid."

He opened the door and pushed it open, turning away at the last second. "As promised, five minutes."

"Five minutes," Jacqueline agreed. She scrambled forward as soon as the door latched, heading immediately towards the records and music strewn in untidy piles across her living room floor, pushed the loose music on top of her upright together into a loose stack, closed the fallboard over the keys. _This is why you clean up before you leave_, she thought to herself, shaking out the blanket on the sofa and tossing it over the back. She gathered up the dress and the other pile of half-worn clothes that had been living in the armchair in her bedroom for the last week, straightened out her rug, tucked the single picture frame of herself with her parents in her bedside drawer, out of view. The jumbled heap of orchestral scores on the floor next to her bed could stay, she decided, kicking them into a slightly neater stack. Peter would just have to live with those.

She opened the door before the agreed-upon five minutes to let him in. For a moment she regretted it, felt a sharp _pang_ of doubt, wondered if revealing her flat, herself, the space inside her mind to him was a good idea. She followed his eyes around the apartment, a sudden wave of anxiety paralyzing her when she saw him moving closer to the photos on her bookshelf, trying to think if she'd left out any photos of her family. It wasn't that she didn't want him to know they existed. But it had been clear from their first meeting that Peter couldn't quite place her, their first encounter six or seven years ago evading his recollection, and it was the raw memory she didn't want him to realize existed: the silent walk home, the _I'm terribly sorry Miss Hallward_, the glass of water he'd brought her while they waited outside the pathologist's office for her father to finish identifying her mother's dead body. It was easier to just let him think her mother was dead, that they might have met by odd coincidence, that they understood each other for reasons besides their shared sensation of profound loss.

"Is this you?" Peter asked, picking up one of the frames and holding it up to her. 

Jacqueline took it from him, squinting at it. It had been taken almost an entire year ago, at one of her final master's recitals. She could remember the photographer standing in the front few rows of the hall after everyone had cleared out to the reception; she spotted herself seated at the piano, posed neatly with the trio's cellist sitting on the stage floor in front of her and the violinist beside them. They'd remarked how it looked like a photograph to be printed on an album cover, joked about making a set of recordings together. "Yeah," she said, turning the frame over in her hands and pulling the backing away to reveal another photo hidden behind it, a candid shot of the trio as they made their way onstage. "It's from a recital last year — it was William's recital, I think, but the whole trio was playing in it. We played the Brahms piano trio." She sighed and handed the photo back to Peter. "That was a really great recital."

Peter replaced the photo on the shelf. "What's it sound like?" He looked back at her, and she felt her heart melting with the earnestness of his question. Maybe it hadn't been a mistake to let him into her place. "The piano trio, I mean."

"I have a recording." It had been a gift from her father after she finished at Trinity, a neat _congratulations, much love to my treasured Jacqueline_ penned along the bottom of the cover. She handed it to Peter. "We played the first one, if you want to hear it."

Peter slid the record out of its sleeve, glanced at her for permission before he placed it on the player and dropped the needle; Jacqueline closed her eyes, trying to think of all the times she'd heard the opening melody. She exhaled with the end of the first phrase and opened her eyes. "Do you like it?" 

He held her close to him, one hand on the small of her back, and she buried her face in his shoulder, inhaling the scent of cigarette smoke and cologne on his shirt, dropping her coat on the floor next to where they stood, feeling the bones in his hand as he took hers with his free one. "It's beautiful," he whispered into her hair. She felt his hand on her back traveling, snaking up, following the curve of her spine to the clasp of her dress, his fingers on the zipper. "May I?"

Jacqueline nodded once into his chest. She thought about how he'd lit the cigarette and pointed at the space next to her on the bench. _May I?_ She thought about how he'd walked her home and unlocked the deadbolt for her when she forgot to, the way he'd looked at her before he left. She thought about how she'd gone to Dr. Brantley's recital the next day to tell him she wouldn't be able to turn in a revised paper by the end of the week, how she couldn't bring herself to skip the recital he'd so happily invited her to. She imagined herself seated in the hall, struggling to breathe as they'd started the Brahms, the heavy breathing of Professor Keyes through every single bowstroke, the unbearable weight pressing on her back as she'd fought to stop crying, _you're in public for Christ's sake_. She'd told Dr. Brantley after the performance, _I won't be able to finish revising the paper by Friday, I won't be in class tomorrow, something's happened,_ trying not to let the tears leak out and failing — she'd never cried in front of a professor before, certainly not Dr. Brantley — and he'd excused himself from the reception and taken her upstairs, back to his office to let her finish crying. 

Her father had returned from Oxford that night. She thought about how they'd gone to the pathologist's office together, driving in unbroken silence, how Peter had been there, then just a constable, with his superior officer, who showed her and her father a curated collection of photographs of her mother's pale, dry face, an ugly bruise on her temple. How her father had gone to speak with the pathologist and the inspector, leaving her with Jakes again; how he'd looked at her, on the verge of asking if she was alright but his facial expression illustrating how clearly he knew she wasn't alright, the single glass of water he'd brought her. _Thank you,_ she'd said, barely able to speak. He had nodded and crossed the table, sat down next to her; the stifling sensation of _aloneness_ had lifted, if only slightly, with the realization that he understood, that he would help her bear the weight of it, that her interpretation of his _I'm terribly sorry, Miss Hallward_ hadn't been incorrect.

Standing in her apartment now, Brahms's first piano trio straining away in the background, her body pressed to Peter's, with his palm on the bare skin of her back, Jacqueline tilted her head up to look at him. She blinked a few times, clearing the urge to cry. "Peter," she said quietly. The words were his and only his: "Thank you."

His brows drew together slightly. "For what?"

_Understanding me,_ she thought. _Speaking my language, bringing me the water. Unlocking my door, waiting for me to clean my flat, listening to the Brahms with me, carrying my bag, carrying my things. Carrying the burden._ But she couldn't decide how to say it without revealing everything and explaining it all, so she hid her face back in his shirt and pulled him towards her bedroom wordlessly and let herself trip over the pile of music she'd left out by the bed.

* * *

**november, 1972**

The street outside the house was quiet and picturesque, the perfect image of suburbia, Morse thought, as he turned off the engine to wait for Jakes. It reminded him of his own home growing up, just neater, less unkempt even with its wild growth of shrubbery and unpruned bushes around the front. Jakes had mentioned the other night that it was Jacqueline's, another of her father's many scattered properties between which she seemed to jump around whenever she found herself in a new and different place. Morse wondered for a brief moment what it was like to have a father who made sure you were taken care of, wherever you were.

Jakes slapped on the roof of the car as he came running out, coat in his arms and an umbrella in his hand. "Morning," he said, getting in and pulling the door closed. "Get any sleep?"

Morse hummed in reply. _Sleep_ was a loose term for it, if he could call it that at all. It was more like napping, interspersed with a few hours of sitting and staring at the wall, thinking about the Delaneys and their beaten little girl. Jakes tossed the umbrella into the backseat. Morse glanced at it in the rearview mirror. "That's a new one," he remarked.

"What is?"

"Bringing your own umbrella." Usually he was rummaging through the stand of umbrellas at the station or openly praying that someone had left an umbrella in the boot of the car for him to use, grumbling about why it had to rain all the time. 

Jakes rolled his eyes. "Jacqueline made me take it. She says it's going to rain. Where to, then?"

"I've got a list of Samuel Delaney's old colleagues and their addresses. The ones that are still alive, anyway." Morse cranked the engine and handed his notebook to Jakes, who flipped it open thoughtfully.

"Your handwriting's gotten more shit since you wrote," he said.

Morse frowned. "Still not as terrible as yours."

Jakes shrugged as if to say _fair_ and kept flipping through. "Who's this?" he said, holding the notebook up to Morse and pointing. "Charles Delaney? That his brother?"

"Strange had to spend some time tracking him down," Morse said. "He lives a bit out of the way, but that's the only living relative we have. What do you think — first or last?"

"First."

"Good, because I really wasn't going to take your answer into account if you'd said last."

Jakes snorted. "Always good to know you haven't changed."

Morse swallowed hard. It shocked him a little, the tone in his voice, almost affectionate. He knew Jakes said it in jest, that he wasn't stupid enough to really think nothing had changed, because it was obvious that really quite a lot had changed. "You know that's not true," he said, after a moment.

"Yeah, I know," Jakes said.

They sat in silence for the entire drive, nearly all forty-five minutes of it, just tense enough to be awkward but neither of them so eager to say something that it was uncomfortable. At one point they drove past a field speckled with sheep and Jakes muttered _sheep_ under his breath. Morse wondered if he was thinking about Hope and her father's cattle ranch, keeping his tiny smile at the innocence of the _sheep_ remark to himself. "What's the number?" he asked, when they drew near.

"There isn't one. You've just written Danbury Lane."

Danbury Lane, as it turned out, was occupied entirely by a farm. Morse glanced over to gauge Jakes's reaction, finding only that he was squinting, otherwise entirely expressionless, inspecting their surroundings. A man, tanned on his arms and face shielded by his hat, climbed over the fencing of the chicken coop and ambled over to meet them as they pulled to a stop in the car and go out.

"Charles Delaney?" Morse said, shutting the car door behind him.

"That's me. What do you want?"

Morse waved his identification, handing it over when Mr. Delaney narrowed his eyes skeptically. "DS Morse." He pointed over his shoulder at the car, where Jakes was standing, waiting to be invited into the conversation. "Formerly DS Jakes. He's working with me on an investigation. Do you mind if we go inside?"

They made their way inside, Mr. Delaney gesturing nondescriptly at the sitting room, ordering them to wait. He held up the kettle from the kitchen doorway and pointed at the two of them, shrugged as if to say _suit yourself_ when both of them shook their heads politely. He came back into the sitting room and sat, elbows on knees, tea in hand. "So what's this all about?"

"Am I right in thinking your brother is a Mr. Samuel Delaney?" Morse said, flipping open his notebook and digging in his pockets for a pen. Finding none — must have left it in the car, he thought — he held his hand out expectantly to Jakes in a silent plea. "In Godstow?"

Mr. Delaney sighed heavily and sat back. "You're not wrong," he said. "But me and Sam, we don't speak much anymore."

"Why's that?"

"No reason." Mr. Delaney shook his head. "Nothing in particular. Just fell out of touch, didn't we? We both served in the war, you know, and came back in one piece when we were done, but Sam was different. He went off and moved away. Said he was working for the government, I think. Nothing against him for it, you know, everyone just thought it was odd that he wanted to be so high and mighty. He's living in Godstow now, you said?" Morse nodded. "See, I didn't know about that. I thought he was still in London, or wherever it was that he was working."

"Mr. Delaney, we're here because your brother was found dead two days ago."

"You're joking."

From beside him, Jakes produced a pen and dropped it into Morse's waiting hand. "We don't typically joke about deaths," Morse said stiffly. 

Mr. Delaney scooted forward in his seat, reaching for his tea. "No, you're right." He rubbed his face. "You say he was found. Did something happen to him?"

"We've opened a murder investigation, if that's what you're asking." Mr. Delaney hummed. "When was the last time you saw him?"

"We spoke on the phone every now and again," Mr. Delaney said. He knit his brow, deep in thought. "Maybe once or twice in a year. Christmas, birthdays, you know. Not often. I'm not made of money, mind. But the last time we actually saw each other must've been at our mum's funeral. It'll be five years next month."

Morse shot a sideways glance at Jakes, who was clearly also thinking about Alice Delaney. "Mr. Delaney, were you aware your brother had a child?"

Mr. Delaney's brow furrowed even further, lines creasing across his forehead. "No," he said, clearly puzzled. "Far as I know, Carol couldn't have children. There was something wrong with her — well, I'm no expert. But they'd been married for years without any kiddies. Probably all right in the end, if he was spending so much time working. London would've been no place for him to bring up kids. He wouldn't have taken good care of them." He paused. "When'd you say this kiddie came along?"

"I didn't." Morse thumbed through the pages of his notebook, searching for the page of notes he'd taken on the files on Alice Delaney. "She wouldn't have been your brother's. She would've been adopted nearly five years ago. We were just wondering if he'd ever mentioned her to you."

Mr. Delaney shook his head again. "I've no idea where she would've come from. He and Carol must have moved out of London shortly after, then. Or before. He was still living in London when they came for the funeral." He looked over at the clock on the mantlepiece. "Look, like I said, Sam and I hadn't really talked in years. I didn't really know anything about his life besides him and Carol after he left here. I should really be getting on with the cows. Is there anything else you need to ask?"

Morse opened his notebook to the list of colleagues and held it out. "Could you take a look at any of these names and tell us if your brother ever mentioned any of them, or anything you knew of his relationships with them?"

Mr. Delaney perused the list, clearly doubtful that he'd recognize any names. "Don't think so. Again, we didn't talk, let alone about his work things. Though if you really want to know — ," and here his eyes roamed the list again, and he stopped to tap on one, " — Helen Wellesley," he said. "She was his secretary, if I remember right. She'll be able to help you best, I think."

Morse took his notebook back and looked at the name Mr. Delaney had pointed at. "Okay," he said, marking a star next to the hastily scribbled heading and handing the pen back to Jakes. "Thank you for your help." 

"It's nothing." Mr. Delaney stood, herding Morse and Jakes towards the front door. "Do I need to identify him, or something? It's just — I'm not very good about dead — well, dead people. Animals, I can handle any day, but people's a different story."

Morse tried to imagine Dr. de Bryn's despairing sigh if Mr. Delaney were to faint in the morgue and stifled his amusement. "We can ask Mrs. Wellesley first," he said, handing over a card. "Save you the trouble of the drive into town. Give us a call if you remember anything."

"You'll come by again, won't you, if you have any news?"

"Of course."

Mr. Delaney nodded a little, as if understanding something complex and foreign. "Okay," he said, opening the door for Morse and Jakes and watching as they headed towards the car. "I'll see you then."

Morse gave a tiny wave as he got in the car and turned to Jakes as soon as the doors were closed. "What did you think?" he asked.

Jakes made a face. "Quiet and knows nothing about his brother," he said, "but nothing out of the ordinary."

"I knew you were going to say that."

"Not everything is a conspiracy to commit murder, Morse. Keep it simple — "

"I don't know why I asked you to come along — "

"Because I was better than you at policing, and — "

"Oh, shut up, just because you think the shortest path between two points is a straight line doesn't mean — "

"But nine times out of ten, it is the easi — "

"Alright, whatever helps you sleep at night," Morse said, rolling his eyes and pulling back onto the main road.

"_Me?!_" Jakes swatted him in protest. "_You're_ the one who could do with some help sleeping."

Morse suppressed the desire to laugh and pulled his foot off the gas for a moment to glance over at Jakes, who grinned and met his gaze. For a moment it felt as if nothing really had changed, that they were still working together, that Joan Thursday was still looking between them and making eyes while her father obliviously missed it all and admonished them both for driving too slow, that they would spend the rest of their day in the pub arguing about who was right. And then they drove by the sheep again and Peter looked away and out the window.

"Look at those sheep," he said, louder than the last time. 

A couple of raindrops splattered on the windows and Morse reached over the dash to turn on the windshield wipers. "They'll get wet."

"They'll smell awful," Jakes agreed. 

"Looks like Jacqueline was right about the rain," Morse said, speeding up again.

"Yeah," Jakes said. He pocketed his pen. "Looks like she was."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> got emo writing 1964 jakes before he became a sergeant, peter jakes retrospective here i come babeyy
> 
> also even when writing non-peter pov i'm still obsessed with his vibes and i realize he seems like Too Much of a gentleman here but i figured it's before and after his bitchy sergeant stage so it's ok 
> 
> ok but fr i know who is this bitch who updated twice in one week...absolutely wild. ((it's bc i always get Maximum Procrastination the week before revision period starts.)) anyway i wrote like a quarter of this during class at 6 am so it's not been proofread and probably also reads like i'm drunk lmao. never thought i'd write a chapter of this length in such a short period of time and also i almost cut out the middle section bc this chapter clocked in at 6300 words ((dummy thicc)) which is a lot compared to my avg but i just really wanted to write jacqueline content, my oc to rule them all kdjflhksf
> 
> anyway thats enough wild rambling. as uszh hope everyone's doing ok & also if u comment i DO read it and it makes me :') im just bad at responding lol. stay safe kiddos -iv


End file.
